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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



SOULS OF THE INFINITE 



SOULS OF 
THE INFINITE 

An Outline of the Truth 



BY 

S. E. GRIGGS, A.B., M.D. 



ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR 



NEW YORK 

THE METROPOLITAN PRESS 

1911 



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^1 



-■ '1 



Copyright, 1911, by 
THE METROPOLITAN PRESS 

Registered at Stationers* Hall, London 
{All Rights Reserved) 

Printed in the United States of America 



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CI,A2D2389 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Dr. S. E. Griggs Frontispiece 

A gentle, rolling country with green hills in the back- 
ground 3 

He came often now 5 

But the soul was striving, striving to fulfil its mis- 
sion Facing 8 

Ruins of one of the prehistoric temples in the lower 
Tigris Valley 21 

Westward the army toiled 40 

That night as Chinzer stood his guard alone 47 

And there were Nejd horses there in numbers 51 

lone 68 

A royal hunt 95 

One lone knight rode out before the battle joined, 
tossing his sword in air 97 

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans upon his hoe 109 

Hen 121 

The same old paths were by the river Facing 128 

Mrs. Hassett Facing 146 



PREFACE 

Read slow. Do not skip. 

Do not hasten for the end; 

because the moral is not there, 

neither is the end, without the 
beginning and the journey. 



m 



Souls of the Infinite 



CHAPTER I 

Once upon a time, very long ago, thousands 
of years before the Star of Bethelem was set, 
thousands of years before the Pyramids were 
built, away back it happened, ages and ages, 
before ever history began. Can you imagine 
how things must have looked then? When the 
human family was very small, when they 
roamed over just a portion of one continent 
and all the rest of the great, wide world was 
new and unsettled. When all of Europe, all 
of Africa, all of North and South America 
contained not one civilized being. There must 
have been a lot of room in the world then — 
think of all the countries that we know and 
there was nobody there — it must have been a 
lonesome place to live in. 



2 'Souls of the Infinite 

How do you suppose the valley of the Ti- 
gris looked in those early, early days when the 
oldest town in the world was not yet thought 
of and the Jordan was away, way out on the 
frontier? Of course, you most probably have 
never seen the Tigris at any time, but then 
you have read about it in the geography; it 
is in Central Asia. Well, this valley looked 
quite some like it does to-day. It was much 
shorter, though; the river itself was swift- 
er and not so deep. The grass on its banks, the 
trees and the wild flowers, the blue sky and the 
hills looked just the same as now. 

About two-thirds of the way up the river on 
the eastern bank a large tributary stream used 
to empty in from a gentle, rolling country with 
green hills in the background, and it was up 
from the bank of this tributary stream, in that 
long, long-ago day which we have told, that a 
young man, or rather a boy, was climbing. He 
was hardly old enough yet to be called a man. 
He had been down to the river to get a drink 
and was going back up to the shade of a wide- 
spreading tree. His body was very brown from 
the sun and weather, for he wore no covering 
except a piece of sheepskin aroimd his loins, 
but you could see that his skin was naturally 



Souls of the Infinite 



a 




A gentle rolling country with green hills in the background 



4 Souls of the Infinite 

white. From the nature of his clothing you 
probably suppose he was tending sheep. Well, 
in a way, he was; for, although this was so 
many, many thousand years ago, still they had 
sheep then and had had for a long time be- 
fore this. 

He was quite tall, this boy, and his arms and 
legs were rather lanky, which gave him that 
kind of a bean-pole appearance which comes to 
most boys of about this age. The expression 
of his face spoke for very little, though it was 
remarkably good, considering the people from 
which he came. His forehead was straighter 
and higher than the average and his nose was 
not as flat as most of the noses in those days, 
but on the whole he looked very much like his 
father and his grandparents had looked for a 
thousand years. Perhaps a little better, but 
very, very little. 

He was a mixture of Aryan blood, which 
probably partly accounted for his looks; it may 
also have partly accounted for the fact that he 
was restless and fretted a little under his 
shepherd's habit. You may think that nobody 
ever fretted in those days, but that is because 
you do not know. This boy was perfectly seri- 
ous about it; in fact, he was troubled about it, 



Souls of the Infinite 



5 




He came often now 



6 Souls of the Infinite 

something was making him restless. Often- 
times in the heat of the day, when his flocks 
and the other shepherds' were asleep, he would 
be moving about or would get up and go for a 
drink, as he did on this occasion. There seemed 
to be something like a struggle going on some- 
where within him, but he could not place it. 
It seemed as if there was something he wanted 
to do, something he ought to do, but he could 
not tell what it was. He would look at the 
trees and the grass, the sky and the hills around 
the east, the river running away to the south, 
the whole of his little world; there must be 
something in it somewhere which he must do, 
something different than he had ever done be- 
fore. But his angular, sinewy arms and legs 
felt helpless — he could not do it with them. 
It was something he could not see. He did 
not know what it was. He did not even know 
how to look for it. 

He was sure it had nothing to do with tend- 
ing sheep, for he knew all that was necessary 
to know about that. He also knew all the 
folk-lore of his people, and he understood 
thoroughly every one of their crude indus- 
trial arts. He could make a bow better 
than any boy in his tribe, and could shoot it 



Souls of the Infinite 7 

farther and straighter. He could also cut out 
a sweeter-toned reed from the pipe-plants by 
the river. But his fathers and his forefathers 
had done these things, his fellow companions 
could do them. It was something else that he 
must do ; but what could it be? What else was 
there to do ? He could not tell ; still, something 
kept calling, calling him to do. It was not any 
of these things which he knew. He felt nearer 
to it when he was farthest away from them, 
when he was watching the great red sun-god 
sink down in the western sky, or when he was 
alone by the river, watching its rippling waters 
hurrying away, always hurrying away. 

What was it, then, that was moving this 
heathen boy, that was taking the dull satisfac- 
tion from out his shepherd's habits? 

Something was calling him — a nameless 
something. He roamed through all his old, 
accustomed haunts, but it was not there. He 
sought the deepest shade, the wildest stretch 
of unbroken plain, but it was not there. No, 
nor could he find it through all the shades and 
plains of his narrow country. It came from 
another source. But something, which had 
very much to do with this calling, he felt, we 
can tell you; though he did not know it, it was 



8 Souls of the Infinite 

his soul. For — yes, he had a soul. Buried 
most awfully deep it was and shackled by a 
thousand hereditary tendencies, and stunted 
and dwarfed, still he had it. 

How it got in him we are not certain, but it 
was there, and it was making itself felt. 
Neither will we say positively where it came 
from. We think it tumbled from the lap of 
destiny through the shaking of her apron ; how- 
ever, you are at liberty to disbelieve that if you 
choose. But, whether you believe it or not, it is 
certain she was having a great deal to do with 
it, and was keeping a very close track of it. 
Opposite the page open for its actions here she 
had set down the name of Thaddeus, but thus 
far the ciphering upon the page was very faint 
and very blurred. 

But the soul was striving, striving to ful- 
fill its mission. It was it, that kept stirring, 
that kept turning to the call, that silent, im- 
perative call, the call of that mysterious cur- 
rent which has moved man on, which is moving 
him on and on, to some eternal sea. This bur- 
ied soul had heard it. 

Human beings had probably been here in 
Central Asia for a good many thousands of 
years before this, but they left no traces 




mission 



Souls of the Infinite 9 

of themselves — ^had made practically no prog- 
ress. 

The less removed man was from the brute, 
the more stationary he seemed. Ages and ages 
were required for the most rudimentary ad- 
vancement. But, however stagnate he was, he 
lost nothing, and all the while, slowly but sure- 
ly, he was approaching the time when his hu- 
mane nature would unfold. Something was 
drawing him onward, always onward, like the 
tiny hillside stream is drawn to the sea. Im- 
peded, pent up and choked at first, but always 
flowing on, until it sweeps a river broad and 
deep. 

To the south of this place of which we speak, 
about the mouth of the river, there was a 
darker-skinned race, who Vv^ere probably a little 
further advanced. They were more populous 
and better builders, being more industrious, but 
most of their buildings were huge, useless, mon- 
umental piles. Their mode of living was al- 
most the same. 

So away back in that heathen darkness, be- 
fore ever there were any signs of dawn, this 
current was calling Thaddeus. Calling him to 
make the first unguided struggle and he was 
groping to rise. But the task before him 



10 Souls of the Infinite 

seemed well-nigh hopeless; he was still close 
to the primitive, his feet were rooted in tra- 
dition, there was no certain way out, and no 
lights to guide. Banks of superstition blinded 
him and he could not see. 

His fathers and his forefathers for genera- 
tions before him had not tried to see ; they had 
paced in unheeding darkness, the same short 
and beaten path. Why should he leave it? 
The way beyond had never yet been tried. 
They had passed their satisfied lives with these 
same simple things. Why should he strive for 
something different? The weight of centuries 
of tribal customs was on his youthful shoulders ; 
why should he rise to shake it off? Why could 
he not tie his sheepskin girdle about him, just 
as his forefathers had done, and lapse peace- 
fully into the dull contentment of his sur- 
roundings ? 

But these peaceful shepherd's surroundings 
had become troubled for him. The dull quiet 
of his accustomed ways had become disturbed. 
His idle haunts had come to fret and brood 
uneasiness. There was no place now where he 
could rest in dull stupidity. Not one place of 
dumb and dormant quiet left for him. He 
tried them all, over and over again, but the 



Souls of the Infinite 11 

same unrest was in them all; the same name- 
less wanting brooded everywhere. The river 
only, of all the places that he knew, seemed yet 
to hold a kind of welcomeness ; but it was not 
rest he found beside its banks, as he watched 
its hurry and its motion — it was a different 
feeling. 

So he came often to it, not to drink, but 
just to sit beside it. There was something in 
the fretful murmurs of its current. Its water- 
spirit seemed to know his vacant wanting. And 
as its wavy shadows would play over his sun- 
browned face you might almost have thought 
there was a flicker of light in his eye. But 
oh, so faint, just the feeblest flicker. This, too, 
was different from the stolid countenances of 
his companions. 

Thaddeus, my gentle savage, you are wak- 
ing, surely waking. Your youthful shoulders 
are straining beneath that iron chain of cen- 
turies. They will break it, surely break it. 

He had made him a better reed and toilfully 
copied some new and sweeter harmonies from 
the river, for which he began to love the river. 
He played them over and over, clear and loud, 
then soft and low, and as he waited, listening 
to the echoes from the water, he began to think. 



12 Souls of the Infinite 

Surely, to think. Yes, the mind of man, that 
dumb and dormant thing, which had been 
locked in slumbering darkness through all the 
vacant ages which had gone before, began to 
stir itself. 

Was it the river that made him think ? Well, 
maybe it was. He did not know. But he was 
thinking, and it was of the river that he thought 
the most. Who put it there? Who gave it 
water? Why was it always hurrying away? 
Who planted the trees upon its bank? Did 
the Great Spirit do all of these things ? He did 
not believe it. 

Many other things like these he thought. 
Simple, of course, but it was very well for him, 
because, you must remember, he had nothing 
to start with. Established facts he had none 
at all. He did not even know that two and two 
made four. Nobody knew it then. He could 
place two stones with two other stones and 
count them up to four, and he could place two 
sheep with two sheep and see that he had four, 
but that it would always make four he did not 
know. Neither did he know that there was 
such a thing as right and wrong. If something 
injured him, he immediately wanted to resent 
it, unless the something was too powerful ; then 



Souls of the Infinite 13 

he was simply moved to get away. It never 
appeared to him as either right or wrong. 
Neither did it, if he injured someone else. 
Right or wrong he did not know, and no kind 
and loving angels came down to teach him. 
There were no angels in those days. He had 
just to think about these things for himself. 

So he worked away, and as fast as his awk- 
ward but energetic brain could examine things 
he hurried to tell them. He would talk about 
them to his companions, to the people in the 
village, but they seemed to take little interest. 
They could not understand. They rather con- 
sidered that something had gone wrong with 
him. He began to be avoided. Soon no one at 
all would listen to him. So it came to be that 
the most part of this thinking business of his 
was told only to the river. 

But the river was always ready to listen, was 
always waiting for him to come, was always 
telling him of new things to think, and soon 
these sprouting thoughts of his began to take 
a wider range. He began to question other 
things — the habits of his people. The pain- 
ful way they marked their bodies he par- 
ticularly did not like. Their sacrificing and 
torturing of themselves to please their sky-gods 



14i Souls of the Infinite 

he could see little good in. Nor did he quite be- 
lieve in the killing of women and children, as 
was their funeral custom. But on these things 
he never voiced his thoughts. Because he was 
afraid. They were sacred customs. 

Oh, custom! Thou hast ever been one of 
the strongest shackles that bind the sons of 
men. 

How tedious and difficult was to become this 
new path he was starting, nor the delusions and 
racking uncertainties which beset it he did not 
know — ^how could he know? Nor if he was 
leaving the quiet ways where ignorance was 
bliss, he did not ask, it mattered not, there was 
no alternative, nor could he turn him back how- 
ever steep should be the road. But Thaddeus 
was not thinking to turn back; no, he was 
minded to follow it, the call he'd answered 
comes not to the faint. Where did it lead! 
Well, first, it led to labor, taxing labor, and 
soon these crudely fashioned, intellectual 
wheels of his began to grind. Thoughts began 
to get entangled in the cogs. He was getting 
hold of grist too large for such a small mill, 
and too much material was crowding in — river 
thoughts, tree and moimtain thoughts, village 
and people thoughts, sky thoughts, star 



Souls of the Infinite 15 

thoughts; beyond the sky thoughts there 
seemed to be no limit to this thinking business. 
And these worrying, puzzhng, questioning 
thoughts so entangled him, hopelessly en- 
tangled him, until he began to be afraid that 
maybe he really had gone wrong. They would 
hold fast to him as if to wear him out; still he 
could not stop it. Something in his head 
would just run on, and on, as if it were a sep- 
arate living thing. He was bewildered. If 
only there was some one to whom he might go 
with questions, some one who might explain 
some things to him. But the wise men of his 
village did not know. At least, they could not 
give an answer that sounded right to him. 
They only seemed to know the traditions of his 
tribe — ^how one of their ancient chiefs had built 
the Thunder Mountain; how Pitris, with but 
a handful of braves, had driven back a myriad 
warriors from the savage north, and how Hus- 
sing had split the huge table rock with one 
blow of his heavy club. But these things he 
already knew. He wanted to ask other ques- 
tions — questions that kept turning over and 
over in his head as if they would break them- 
selves out. But there was no one, no one in 
the whole wide world to whom he might go — 



16 Souls of the Infinite 

not one solitary mortal to help him. For the 
world was dark. 

But, strange enough, as this difficult think- 
ing business kept on, the troublesome things 
began to untangle themselves. He began to 
answer some of his own questions. The river 
helped him. The trees and the mountain 
helped him. The great wide plain with its hazy 
sky helped him. And something else, which he 
did not know, which had lost itself within him, 
was helping him most. 

One day, late in summer, Thaddeus drove 
his flocks far up the winding river, or perhaps 
it would be better to say he followed them, for 
the flocks in those days took about as much 
of the responsibihty and "thought for the mor- 
row" upon themselves as did the people who 
tended them. Farther up they went than ever 
before, because the grass was very dry on the 
plains. Thaddeus was playing his new har- 
monies, and he could play; perhaps not to the 
enjoyment of you or me, but it made sweet 
music to a savage ear. The tones seemed to 
blend so sweetly with the limpid notes from 
the water, and while he played something crept 
out to listen. Was it a wild- wood fawn? No; 
though it acted much the same. It was afraid. 



Souls of the Infinite 17 

Still it wanted to come. It was drawn by the 
chords he played, and the harmonies seemed to. 
hold it. 

Ere he saw it Thaddens felt its coming, just 
like he felt the evening, only different — a deep- 
er, subtler feeling. He turned to see it, and 
somehow, like a memory shadow, he seemed to 
know it. And it was then no longer so afraid, 
but came a little closer and sat down to listen. 

There seemed to be a kind of mutual under- 
standing between them, perhaps they had met 
somewhere before, or perhaps they moved in 
the same social circles, or perhaps more pos- 
sibly they had long before this romped in the 
lap of Destiny together. 

All the rest of the long autumn days Thad- 
deus' flocks were pastured far up the river ; for 
he was now divided between two emotions. He 
wanted to walk by the river and think, and he 
wanted to sit in the wood and play his reed 
with this new creature whose acquaintance he 
had made. Her name, to destiny, was Phillis. 
She came from the Hill Tribe. 

Theirs was no formal courtship, no social 
ladder to climb, no ambitious parents to con- 
ciliate ; no, nor did they even know the worries 
of a flat. But as Thaddeus spent his days with 



18 Souls of the Infinite 

Phillis, as he played to her in their leafy apart- 
ments, he began to lose that restless, thinking 
feeling — the call from the river — it came back 
to him fainter and fainter, like an echo from 
his flute. It was being lulled to sleep. It 
might have slumbered again, but something 
happened, something fierce and terrible. He 
had heard his grandsire tell how it had hap- 
pened once before. 

The greedy hordes from the south were 
marching upon Lulubi. 

All the flocks must be gathered in. Every 
tribe must muster every son. The cry flew 
wild through valley and plain. 

Thaddeus caught the spirit, it bounded 
through his pulse, it thrilled him. It called to 
fight for home, to strike the hated ravisher, — 
courageous impulses, but they were o'ershad- 
owed by a far fiercer passion which it kindled 
in his breast, just as it kindled in every other 
native breast — it was the passion for war, their 
dominant passion; in fact, the only passion 
they possessed. 

All the animal nature of their wild ancestors 
surged through them. The savage rivermen 
from their bone-strewn caves were incarnated 
again. 



Souls of the Infinite 19 

The battle joined, with savage warcry, with 
clash of ragged flint and wooden buckler, with 
frenzied turmoil, and with streams of blood. 
There was charge on charge and these primi- 
tive sons of Lulubi may have acquitted them- 
selves with credit, may have performed doughty 
deeds of valor, but there was no one to com- 
memorate, no historians to chronicle and no 
minstrels to immortalize. 

But the greedy foe were unsubduable. 
From every charge they rallied in countless 
numbers. Onward they came like sand from 
the desert, till strength was gone; her defense 
was broken, there was none to hinder and Lu- 
lubi was stricken. 

Her scanty fields were wasted and her vil- 
lages in ashes. Her old men slain and her 
young men taken captive. Everywhere was 
ruin and slaughter. Her smiling valleys with 
myrtle and vine, her flocks and olive groves, 
all were no more. The ruthless hand spared 
nothing, for in those savage days to show 
mercy was a weakness. 



CHAPTER II 

Thaddeus was among the captives. He was 
led away to the south, to the sea-land, and made 
a slave. This youth from the upland country, 
this primitive explorer of thoughts, had been 
immeshed in the web of circumstances, vnthout 
choice ; his scene of action had been shifted. In- 
stead of the shady river bank and his reed, he 
had now the marl-pits and the hot southern sun. 

Strange places and adverse conditions were 
about him. Swarthy men he saw who wore 
straw coverings upon their bodies, and whose 
language could not be understood. The sun- 
god beat hot upon him, the mud and clay was 
heavy and his lanky limbs ached with the labor. 
But his mind was clearer now — something 
seemed to have had a purging effect upon it. 

Human strife and bloodshed, ruthless and 
cruel as they may have been, have been abso- 
lutely essential. Nothing else could break from 
people the tenacious hold of customs. 

These inhabitants of the lower Tigris, while 

20 



Souls of tJie Infinite 



21] 




Ruins of one of the prehistoric temples in the lower Tigris 

Valley 
— RawUnson's ^'Ancient Monarchies" 



22 Souls of the Infinite 

very near the same intellectual level as their 
northern neighbors, were a step in advance in 
the progress of evolution. They were more 
communistic in their habits, more industrious 
and more collective in their action. Thaddeus 
observed them with this wondering, question- 
ing curiosity of his: — The huts of their city 
spread out in countless numbers, yet there 
seemed scarce room enough for all the people, 
so crowded were the streets with them: — Such 
strange customs they observed among them- 
selves, and they bowed down to so many queer 
images of wood and clay: — They seemed also 
very busy, always hurrying somewhere. 

Thaddeus was observing things — that is not 
to say he was standing around looking on; he 
was part of the performance, very busy, very 
much employed. He and his fellows were 
making brick, or rather making large mud 
slabs — making them under very caustic induce- 
ments and with very unpleasant facilities. For, 
besides the driving taskmasters, besides the 
heat and the gritty mud which hurt his hands, 
he had a very uncomfortable piece of wood 
fastened to his leg, which made walking quite 
difficult and running impossible. But they 
could not fasten any shackles to his mind, and 



Souls of the Infinite 23 

while his hands were busy his mind was look- 
ing around and considering: — The river — ^it 
seemed to him, they were trying to stop it run- 
ning, with this baked mud which they made: 
— Streams of captive slaves were continually 
carrying it into the river, but the river spread 
out over its banks and flowed on just the same : 
— They were also building high, massive piles 
of this mud upon the land, probably hoping by 
them to climb into the sky: — There were armies 
and armies of workers, a few were white, but 
the most part were dark, much darker than the 
Sumerian people. 

Thaddeus was industriously studying this 
new arrangement of things, contriving to un- 
derstand its meaning, endeavoring to associate 
it with the working of other things which he 
knew. He was trying to analyze the industry 
of Sumeria in a much broader way than they 
had ever tried to do themselves. 

His eager brain gathered up each frag- 
ment of knowledge. He began to copy their 
language and to adopt their manner. He was 
adjusting himself to these imavoidable condi- 
tions — an ability shown afterward to be mark- 
edly possessed by these white-skinned people. 
And while he discharged, with as much grace 



24 Souls of the Infinite 

as possible, the disagreeable favors these Su- 
merians were asking, he was also formulating 
opinions for himself about the things he saw. 

For one hundred days he worked in the bitu- 
men and clay. A hundred days he was a part 
of the ceaselessly grinding mill; then, probably 
because of the adaptability he had shown, 
possibly because he was too light for the la- 
bor, or possibly it was just mere chance, but he 
was taken away from the marl-pits, into the 
busy part of the city, and placed with the build- 
ers — workmen who were none of his kin, but he 
perceived that they also were bondmen. But 
their taskmasters were less severe, and they 
wore a covering upon their bodies like the Su- 
merians, the which was also given to him, his 
sheepskin girdle having long since succumbed. 
They spoke this new language which he was be- 
ginning to adopt, and he learned much from 
them. 

These images which he had seen about the 
town were gods. These massive structures 
which they piled up tier on tier were god- 
houses. Strange, it seemed to him, that these 
gods should need to have such houses built for 
them. But his was not now to question; he 
was only to build ; so he accepted the inevitable. 



Souls of the Infinite. 25 

The circumstances under which he moved 
were quite beyond his control; there was noth- 
ing else for him to expect. He understood the 
dominating political situation quite thoroughly, 
much better than many of those who dominated 
him. He knew that the valleys of Lulubi were 
wasted, that his people and kindred were scat- 
tered and slain. He knew that Sumeria was 
the master. He readily perceived her great 
strength and her great activity. He also saw 
that she was pushing forward, with forced la- 
bor, gigantic constructions, the object of which 
he could not quite understand. She was ambi- 
tiously creating and he was helping her, 
whether by his own choice it did not matter. So 
he built, and he built exceedingly well. The 
same spirit, which in the marl-pits had marked 
him to survive, dominated him here and drove 
him to excel. 

So diligently did he build, and such cunning 
did his hand display, that he soon became one 
of the foremost workmen, and often marked 
the tablets with their curious pictures, which he 
learned to understand. 

Thaddeus — the gods, for some reason, had 
dealt quite unkindly wiUi him ; they had all but 
killed him, enslaved him and then thoughtless- 



26 Souls of the Infinite 

ly tossed him to the bottom, or, more properly 
speaking, to the bottom of the bottom — a 
stranger in bondage, without a comitry and 
without a people — but he was climbing up. He 
had already reached the first round, which was 
well, for the bottom rounds are very long steps, 
and no hand was out to help him. At the bot- 
tom of the ladder there are no helping hands. 
If there are hands stretched out to aid, then 
you are not at the very bottom. 

The god-houses he was building were very 
high, with long rows of steps running up and 
down. When Thaddeus was up he could see 
far out over the country of Sumeria, a beauti- 
ful, sunlit valley dotted with clustering palm 
trees and yellow with fields of grain. Of the 
city, the most of the huts were on the west side 
of the river, and farther out to the west he 
could see another river beyond this, the plains 
stretching away to meet the sky; out yonder, he 
learned, lived the wild savages, the enemies of 
Sumeria. To the south, the river wound on, 
some two days' journey through low, marshy 
country to the sea. In the streets of the city 
he could see trains of naked slaves going to 
and fro, and men of Sumeria in their straw 
coverings — a kind of skirt extending from the 



Souls of the Infinite 27 

waist to midway the thighs, often very finely 
woven, but of women scarce a one. 

The women here were kept mostly about the 
houses, and they were kept well covered in this 
straw fabric. For it was already an estab- 
lished fact, that the most part of a woman's 
body is a thing obscene, not to be looked at in 
public. By the way, some nations still scru- 
pulously adhere to this heathen belief and sta- 
tion strong, brave men on guard at such places 
as Coney Island and Atlantic City. 

The days he worked were very long and he 
had only poached grain and some dried fruit to 
eat, and at night he slept in a roofless inclosure 
guarded by Sumerian soldiers. But he wore 
no wooden shackles here, and though he was 
busy the work was not so hard. He had be- 
come quite resigned to it, and was now a splen- 
did builder. Still, do you think that his mind 
did not often turn again to his native plains, 
to his flocks and the music of his flute, to those 
sunmier days when he walked with Phillis and 
played to her, when all his world was bright 
and he was free and careless? If you could 
sometimes see him gazing from the top of one 
of those precipitous god-houses, with a far- 
away, longing look on his face, and hear him 



28 Souls of the Infinite 

heave a muffled sigh, you would know he did. 
But this was a far different world, an active 
world, harsh and cruel, where there were only 
days of toil. Still his hardened muscles had 
come not to mind it much; he was himself be- 
ginning to change, for continued environment 
of whatever kind is bound to have its ef- 
fect. His face now wore a different look, he 
was no longer that mild shepherd boy with staff 
and flute. He would have felt quite queer now 
with only a sheepskin girdle on. The hills 
with flocks alone would probably have seemed 
a lonesome place. And his work, unnatural 
though it was, was beginning to take a place in 
his life. He had become a part of the city. 
Her restless activity seemed to mate his rest- 
less mind. That subtle attachment was 
fastened which the city had, even in those 
pagan days. 

As his hand through care and practice be- 
came still more cunning, his work still lighter 
grew. He came to do but the finer parts. 
Also, with less arduous toil, more often would 
come that far-away look in his face. But he 
was not always thinking of his native hills. 
For that questioning thing within him, which 
had been obscured in the absorbing straits of 




Souls of the Infinite 29 

new conditions, had gathered strength, and was 
now reasserting itself with a much firmer 
grasp. It was reviewing this new Hfe of his, 
was taking to account these Sumerian customs 
and these Sumerian gods. 

Once as he mused thus o'er 
his work, marking a huge ( \ | Q 
clay tablet — writing a his- 
tory that should prove all too 
fragile for the stretch of 
time — that should never 
reach the distant workers that were to come — 
once as he stood writing thus, the prince of 
the Western Tribe (Sumeria was composed 
of four tribes, each with a prince — there were 
no kings in the world as yet) came by and 
paused to watch him make the lines. He in- 
quired concerning the fair-skinned boy, for 
Thaddeus looked almost white beside his 
dusky companions. Then he bade the guard 
bring Thaddeus down to him, and as he came 
he liked him more, for Thaddeus was straight 
of bearing and had still his freeborn manner. 

"Gentle youth,'' said he, "where is thy na- 
tive land?" 

Thaddeus answered: "I am from the north, 
most noble sire, from Lulubi, near her eastern 



30 Souls of the Infinite 

mountains ; but for twenty moons have I known 
this southern clime." 

He asked him much about his work, and why- 
he made the pictures running thus. And 
Thaddeus explained to him many things which 
he had thought — how that if the lines ran so, 
the picture should mean more, and if this way 
different — so that the prince seemed pleased 
and dismissed him and went his way. 

But on the morrow came a messenger and 
Thaddeus was taken away. The prince had 
bought him for a steward in his household. 

So Thaddeus ministered in the prince's 
household, and the prince favored him because 
of his understanding, and made him overseer 
both in his house and in his fields. And he 
waxed strong in all the lore of the Sumerians, 
for his brain was eager, and his restless soul 
was quiet only so long as there were new things 
to understand. 

This prince of the Western Tribe was ac- 
counted a mighty man among his people, a 
counselor in peace and a leader in war. He 
had much land and many slaves. He had cattle 
and houses and earthen vessels of fine work- 
manship. In his household were many concu- 
bines, who weaved fine plaits of colored straw. 



Souls of the Infinite 31 

and his mistress wore precious stones and 
pieces of gold brought from a far country. 
She was a Turanian by birth, the daughter of 
a chief whom the Sumerians had taken captive, 
and she showed Thaddeus much rude affection, 
because of his stewardship. She was quite 
comely, with large, dark eyes, but unthinking 
eyes, that reflected nothing from their dark- 
ness, for women here were kept secluded and 
restricted — a picture of man's first subjuga- 
tion, which was woman. 

Thaddeus went much to and fro in the city 
about his master's business. He saw the build- 
ing of her many temples ; he read the many in- 
scriptions, most of which he did not believe. 
He did not believe there were so many, many 
gods, with such queer powers and requiring 
such useless service. Neither did he believe 
they did all these wonderful things for the 
Sumerian people. In his youth he had held 
little confidence in the rites and sacraments of 
the sky-gods; he now held nothing but vague 
disgust for these gods of clay. 

Still, often as he read he stopped and pon- 
dered. Perhaps his benighted mind was try- 
ing then to pierce the future, who knows? To 
peer a thousand thousand years adown the 



32 Souls of the Infinite 

path of time, when empires should decay and 
students search through buried heaps for these 
same fragile tablets. Perhaps he vaguely saw 
the coming of another day which this day and 
time should know not — which he should know, 
but which should know not him — and longed to 
leave some lingering trace behind. 

Thaddeus, though mentally some advanced, 
was still a creature of his day and time, a man 
subject to the vicissitudes of men. The prince 
had given him to wife his handmaid, a native 
of the sea-land, but Thaddeus loved her not; 
he liked his mistress better, though neither 
touched his heathen heart, where buried, lay 
the image of a northern girl. 

These Sumerians were always at war, either 
defending their own border against the desert 
hordes or plundering their weaker neighbors. 
Peace, in their conception, was a one-winged 
angel; her other pinion was the pinion of suc- 
cessful battle. And Thaddeus now led the 
prince's cohorts. The prince's arm had grown 
too old. His burden had fallen upon Thad- 
deus, and Thaddeus was proving himself a 
strong and valiant son to this foster-mother of 
the south. 

And though he was, in custom and manner, 



Souls of the Infinite 33 

now quite a citizen of Sumeria, his river-nature 
still was in him. And often when duty spared 
it would lead him through the city, uncon- 
cerned, to the Tigris's reedy banks, there to 
renew a kindred feeling. Better than any na- 
tive son he loved their Tigris with her eddying 
currents. To him it seemed the embodiment 
more of power and more worthy of adoration 
than their many gods. 

This one-time slave, now devoted to Su- 
meria, her strength and her weakness he knew. 
He had seen her dry years and her years of 
plenty. He had flooded the water out over her 
land in more abundance. He had seen her 
temples started and her shrines completed. He 
had brought many captives to hasten her build- 
ing. Still the river flowed on, still the moon- 
god waxed and waned, still seed-time and 
harvest unchanged. Was this, then, all? His 
active soul was struggling anew with the door 
which held locked the possibilities of man. The 
unsatisfied feeling of his youth was returning. 
The current was calling him again. 

The hosts of Sumeria were marshaling, so 
once again he led them forth. This youth from 
the upland country, this adopted son led them 
forth, with shields painted and torches burn- 



34? Souls of the Infinite 

ing; but he came not back again. The battle- 
field had claimed him, had locked him in her 
sodden folds, to sleep the sleep of ages, to mix 
his ashes with the ashes of the past. 



Thaddeus we have lost, but the soul we shall 
find again. Why not? Do you suppose they 
perish with the body? Or do you suppose the 
hand that made them left them here to work a 
day and then to rest in idleness for ages? Ah, 
no ! They for some infinite purpose have been 
fashioned, and until that purpose is complete 
they will be here. 



CHAPTER III 

A THOUSAND thousand years had rolled 
away and a thousand thousand souls had 
toiled to raise the race of man, when next we 
look, and see among them one we know, an Ak- 
kadian boy, whose ways are unmistakable. He 
is of the landed class, the class just above the 
freemen, and his name is Chinzer. 

These hasty, pugnacious, terrestrial tenants 
have now divided themselves distinctly off into 
classes. A faint glimpse of this tendency we 
saw among the Sumerians, due to the fortunes 
of war; here it is more birth, and these aborigi- 
nal noblemen are quite proud and exclusive, 
with quite ancestral lines. 

We said a thousand thousand years. Time 
was not very accurately measured in those hazy 
days ; probably about four thousand years had 
passed. In the interim had happened the "un- 
wary Adam" and the "renowned Noah with 
his Ark," also; what Thaddeus saw as a marshy 

35 



36 Souls of the Infinite 

stretch of river-bottom was now a flourishing 
city, old and established, beginning to decline. 
Queen of the East — yes more, proud Babylon, 
once queen of the world. 

Chinzer's home was in Borsippa, a village 
on the Euphrates River, just to the south of 
this great Babylon. He was a stripling of a 
boy, just at that age to comprehend quite 
easily the conditions about him, but to question 
nothing, accepting everything to be as it was. 
He had been many times in the city of Baby- 
lon, with her walls and brazen gates, her 
straight streets running to the river, each with 
its brazen gate; her many sections, with dif- 
ferent-colored awnings; but it never occurred 
to him as being very great — in fact, he never 
thought in particular about it. He liked the 
Pashe section best, because the streets were 
shaded better there, and fewer soldiers were 
loitering about. He had often seen the Patesi, 
with his gorgeous robes and his fan-bearers, 
and he knew that S argon II was king, and that 
he lived at Nineveh. But kings and satraps 
troubled him very little; he was too busy with 
his own affairs to bother about such things. 

Things were transpiring fairly rapidly, how- 
ever, in this ancient, prehistoric metropolis. 



Souls of the Infinite 37 

Wars of subjugation or revolt were every- 
where and continuous. The deposed Chaldsean 
prince, from his mountain retreat, was watch- 
ing Babylon with covetous eyes. The Baby- 
lonian nobility was restless under the Assyrian 
yoke. The common rabble were eager for any 
change. JMesopotamian society was in an un- 
settled state, but they were used to it. Things 
never had been very much settled. This was 
kind of a grabbing time. Established dwellers 
in favored localities had accumulated consider- 
able wealth, but possession still constituted 
ownership among the tribes of the earth; so 
wealth to be had, and power to get it, furnished 
ample grounds for war. The land here was 
already gathered up into vast estates, and the 
condition of mankind in general was about 
like serfage, with rapid oscillations from sol- 
dier to slave. 

So here, in this ancient, boasted civilization 
of the East, the soul of Thaddeus looked upon 
things little better, even worse, than they were 
four thousand years before — saw with discour- 
agement the tardy progress of this human 
family. The great revolution of things, which 
had been established when "man's selection" 
first supplanted "nature's selection," had been 



38 Souls of the Infinite 

diverted; greed and avarice had blocked the 
iwheels. 

When Chinzer became eighteen he was 
taken to Nineveh to enter the king's army, for 
the king, as usual, was preparing for war, and 
he was to be a mounted archer in the southern 
troop. Though but a youth, he showed plainly 
the characteristics of the class to which he be- 
longed, the reduced Akkadian land-holders. 
They were a proud, haughty people, very cou- 
rageous, but of a coiu-age tinged with fierce- 
ness ; austere to inferiors and treating superiors 
with reserve; extremely religious, but their re- 
ligion was a sensuous affair, filled with lascivi- 
ous ceremonies. 

Long-buried Nineveh, that one-time martial 
mistress of the Tigris, that city of blood and 
palaces which ruled the nations with a rod of 
iron ; whose arrows were swift and terrible, and 
whose bow was ever bent; whose streets were 
like the shambles of the slaughter, and whose 
gates were glutted with the spoils of war — • 
Chinzer now saw her in all her pagan glory. 
She was much different from exclusive Baby- 
lon, much larger, with higher walls. 

Outside her eastern gate the army was en- 
camped, and such a concourse of foreign rab- 



Souls of the Infinite 39 

ble! Chinzer looked on them in wonder. Here 
were wild, skin-girded Scythians from the 
north, marshaled beside fierce, yellow-faced 
Tartars from the plains; gaudy-colored Hit- 
tites from Syria; Medes and Elamites from the 
eastern mountains; Kimmerian warriors from 
the northern sea, and around them everywhere 
the brawling Assyrian soldier ; banners stream- 
ing above phalanx of spears and prancing 
chargers; guards hurrying to and fro amid 
shouting officers. 

Nineveh, with her hirelings, was going to 
battle; a martial host, which represented not 
the zeal of patriotic sons, but the rampant de- 
sire for plunder — soldiers who delighted in 
war for itself alone. They were trained fight- 
ers, however, tried with many battles, and their 
king was leading them forth to spoil. 

Westward, he led them forth. Westward, 
the army toiled; two hundred thousand men 
dragging its spiked shadow across the arid 
plain. 

Down into Palistena they were going, to 
smite the rebellious Jew. The gods of Meso- 
potamia, abundantly propitiated with sacrifice 
and burnt-offerings, were aiding them in the 
attack. The gods of Judea, also persuaded by 



40 



Souls of the Infinite 




Westward the army toiled 



Souls of the Infinite 41 

the smell of roasted meats, were assisting, with 
equal zeal, the Hebrews in their defense. But 
on this occasion, for some unaccountable rea- 
son — possibly the meats were not good, or the 
flavorings were poor, or the cooking was un- 
hygienic — the Hebrew gods forsook the unwar- 
like Children of Israel; so they were put to 
the sword, their children sent into slavery, and 
their land left wasted and desolate. Assyria, 
through divine indulgence, was again victori- 
ous and triumphant, Nineveh again meted 
out her destructive assimilation. 

Two years Chinzer spent with the army in 
Judea, chastising the chosen faithful. This was 
when the mournful loss of the "Ten Tribes" 
was accomplished. 

As soon as this campaign of devastation was 
completed, and the booty safely carried to 
Nineveh, the King led his army to ravish the 
Elamites, whose country was just east of 
Kaldi. But these people were of the same 
fighting, rapine stock as the Assyrians, and 
while the King was boating his marauders 
down the Euphrates — although the gods had 
been bountifully conciliated — they flanked 
across overland and smote him in the rear. 
Such havoc did they raise v/ith his baggage and 



42 Souls of the Infinite 

his reinforcements that the King was glad to 
retreat. 

These mountain people later aided in bring- 
ing about the complete destruction of his king- 
dom, and administered, in after years, to war- 
like Nineveh the annihilating subjugation 
which she had so long been meting out to the 
weaker nations about her. 

Now, when King Sennacherib had obtained 
an ample sufficiency of the sting of the Elam- 
ites, he turned about him for some less fortified 
people to beset. The masses which he held 
under him clamored for activity, and, unless he 
gave them war, his army, and consequently his 
kingdom, would fall to pieces. So he decided 
to invade Arabia. Everything else available 
was already despoiled to about the last degree, 
and, besides, Arabia had incurred his enmity. 
So he again marshaled his mighty host — spear- 
men and bowmen, a countless number, thirst- 
ing for the spoil — and with blaring trumpets 
and streaming banners led them down into 
Arabia. 

These Arabs, while not animated with the 
fighting spirit of the Elamites, were a more 
dangerous foe for such an army. They were 
too wild and too averse to labor. They would 



Souls of the Infinite 43 

not build cities nor plant vineyards sufficient 
to furnish spoils for such a host. When the 
wily Arab was on his horse, and his blanket 
wrapped about him, his hut was empty. 

They were such a thieving set themselves 
that it was folly for any of them to accumulate 
much ; and so accustomed was each to pilfering 
neighbors that whenever the Arab left his 
house he always took all his belongings with 
him. 

Their only wealth being horses, these they 
quickly drove away, and the fleet Arab was far 
out of sight, leaving only vacant, deserted huts 
for the slow, plodding Assyrian army to ravish. 
They were robbers, true, these brigands of the 
Assyrian king, but they were no match for the 
thieving Arab, who even stole from the army 
that had come to plunder him. 

The monarch took a number of their wooden 
gods, but these the Arabs probably left to their 
own divine protection.* He also took captive 
their pretty queen, and sent her back to Nine- 
veh, with a detachment of his mounted archers 
for a guard. The rest of his mighty host were 
led off into the desert by the vanishing foe, 
where they perished. 
♦"Hist. Babylonia and Assyria," Hugo Winckler. 



44 Souls of the Infinite 

Is it possible, that there may be any truth 
for us in these crude pantomimes of human 
activity that were being played with such earn- 
estness here, while yet the stage was dark and 
curtained? Do you imagine what caused these 
turbulent masses to rush blindly hither and 
thither, with such eagerness for battle? What 
kept those kings, at the cost of life and king- 
dom, trailing their forces incessantly backward 
and forward across the face of Asia? It was 
not all for spoils. 

If we look deeper we can see another motive 
force, a remnant of which is still firmly planted 
in our nature. Though unidentified, it was the 
baser human interpretation of the universal de- 
sire for activity which they felt — the demand 
for motion, which runs through every atom of 
organic matter. That human desire for the 
new, and the unattained, when analyzed, is 
mainly the demand for motion. Do we not see 
it in the great general weeping for more 
worlds to conquer; in the powerful magnate 
who, with tottering steps, is still grasping for 
power; in the greedy capitalist's frenzied ef- 
forts for more gold? It is not wholly for the 
possession of these things, for they each have 
enough and to spare. It is the passion for ac- 



Souls of the Infinite 4s5 

tion uncontrolled. It becomes all-absorbing, 
rooting out the finer qualities of man's nature, 
blighting his ability to appreciate the real ob- 
ject of living. 

One of the guards for the Arab queen was 
Chinzer, as wild as an Arab himself. His boy- 
hood days had seen nothing but turmoil and 
strife. He was thirty-one now, and had been 
for thirteen continuous years a warrior hired to 
the king. For thirteen years he had carried the 
soul of Thaddeus over these wreck-strewn 
marches and into these pillaging depredations. 
Chinzer, however, recognized them not as such ; 
he was but one of the mass, crowded backward 
by environment, hemmed in by custom, com- 
pelled by circumstances. 

Chinzer, we cannot say much for you; your 
pugnacity has exceeded its utility. If it were 
not for the fact that you carried the soul of 
Thaddeus within your bosom we would be 
tempted to leave you out of the picture. 
Combativeness and the will to attract were 
planted in man's nature for a purpose, but here 
it is being perverted, enslaved to brutish greedi- 
ness. Thirty-one years have you been the cus- 
todian of a human soul, what have you to show 
for it ? A scarred and dented shield and a well- 



40 Souls of the Infinite 

worn cutlass? These are not the hope of mor- 
tals. You were also given some "talents"; 
what have you done with them, buried them or 
dissipated them? For thirteen years has a 
soldier's better self been calling to you, for 
thirteen years has human inspiration and feel- 
ing been kept hidden beneath your trooper's 
garb. How tediously slow to understand is 
the nature of man. 

As Chinzer followed this impatient handful 
of guards back across the desert he reflected. 
There was little else he could do. These were 
the most befitting days for the soul to whisper, 
to try and show the evil of these things men 
did. 

So he began to be dissatisfied with this 
marauding warfare — began to dislike his riot- 
ous career. 

"This is a dogged life," thought he to him- 
self, "this glorious civilization of ours; it is 
worse than the heathen." 

His idle cutlass heavy at his girdle hung 
and his buckler chafed his shoulder as he rode. 
He was moody, pursued with discontent, until 
by chance it happened he observed the little 
queen, and then his thoughts went otherwise. 
For she was very pretty, and the soul of 



Souls of the Infinite 



47 




That night as Chinzer stood his guard alone 



48 Souls of the Infinite 

Thaddeus had always a fondness for pretty 
women. 

She looked very sad to him. Her tears were 
falling, and her eyes, so like big, dark windows, 
were drooping now. Chinzer wanted to com- 
fort her, but he knew not how. He had been 
so little among women, for in Assyria the 
women were kept secluded, and he knew not 
what to say. Poor captive thing, whenever she 
looked at him he could feel something come 
throbbing in his breast, for whether free or 
captive she was a queen. He told her, in Ara- 
bic, not to cry so, that the king mayhap would 
be kind to her. But she answered nothing, but 
only sobbed and drooped her head. 

That night, when Chinzer stood his guard 
alone above the sleeping caravan, his soul was 
heavy and his thoughts were of the day. The 
little queen was silent, but he could see the 
heaving of her bosom and would have spoken 
again to cheer her, but was afraid. 

And then she called him to her. This was 
the first time she had spoken, and she used his 
own Assyrian tongue. She told him how her 
heart was broken, how she could never live 
within walls confined, like the Assyrian women ; 
told him of her desert free, and pressed him 



Souls of the Infinite 49 

long to flee away with her from death to life 
and liberty. Her little bosom trembled with 
the sobs it gave, and he could see the tear-drops 
to her lashes clinging. 

The soul of Thaddeus stirred strong within 
him, — it would have gone without a second's 
waiting, — and struggled hard to show that 
right was right to do, though right should 
break a law. 

Harsh, martial mandates heavy o'er this 
bivouac hung, and scattered round lay sym- 
bols of the weight of Nineveh. This beaten 
trail was close with laws and orders pressed; 
beyond it led to binding laws the same. The 
south away stretched wide and free, with care- 
less nights and days. 

The desert darkness bore the weeping of 
Sheba's sister queen. The silent air kept sigh- 
ing her entreaty: "Stern Nineveh is distant. 
There are ways where none can follow. There 
is safety in this mantle of the night." An 
Assyrian guardsman stood forbidding, but a 
soldier's heart was listening. And when the 
morning sunbeams came twinkling across the 
desert sands and roused the slumbering cara- 
van, they were not there. 



CHAPTER IV 

Two-hundred-odd years after the close of 
our Assyrian picture, in what was once the 
dim and hazy dawn of history, but which now 
is more distinctly seen, there was a mighty 
gathering together of the sons of men. The 
place was Critalla, in Cappadocia, and the man 
who swayed the scepter was Xerxes, a Persian 
monarch, who, while not the greatest, was still 
the mightiest ruler the world had thus far 
known. It had taken four years for this legion 
to gather, four years since his messengers had 
sped to every province of his vast domain, and 
now were marshaled here beneath the Persian 
banner the standards of well-nigh every na- 
tion — excepting Greece — and the gathering 
was for her. 

We said from well-nigh every nation — from 
sun-scorched India across to Asia Minor, from 
Egypt and from Africa had levies come to 
swell the Persian host — but from Arabia none. 
No foreign levies had been wrung from her, be- 
cause these monarchs could never bend her 

50 



Souls of the Infinite 



51 




And there were 



Nejd horses there in numbers 



52 Souls of the Infinite 

stubborn neck beneath their servile yoke. 
True, for hire there were a few small squads 
of camel-drivers there, but from the great wide 
Nejd plain, or from Jebel Shammar, there was 
not a soldier. Those warriors did not fight for 
hire. But there were caravans of Kedar mer- 
chants there, come up with goods to sell, and 
there were Nejd horses there in numbers. 

Among one company of these desert sons 
who had come up with horses fleet to trade for 
Persian gold there was a prince, from Nejd, 
the guider of the caravan. And as he brought 
his dusty company to halt there was a look 
about him and an action which seemed famil- 
iar. His name was Rashid, son of Obar; still, 
scarcely would you have imagined that beneath 
his goat-hair mantle stirred a soul akin to 
Chinzer. 

Two hundred years of desert life had fash- 
ioned a very different man from that we lost. 
Besides, this Arab was of royal blood, an intru- 
sion quite unwelcome, for we deal but with the 
race of men — the general — the fashioning of 
nature — and take not to account such special 
birth or artificial privilege. 

But this Rashid did not act the part of east- 
ern lordly prince. There was no bowing and 



Souls of the Infinite 53 

saluting as he passed by, no dusky slaves were 
clustering round to fan him, no hampering of 
his stride with fringe and trappings. Son of 
the desert, he would scorn such things. In Ke- 
dar every man was born a prince, a son of the 
Almighty. And Rashid, unreserved, would 
grasp the hand of any member of his caravan, 
would share his bed or share his board, or in a 
private brawl would meet him hand to hand on 
equal grounds. 

Such was the life he led and such the land 
from whence he came. No pampering to dis- 
dainful royalty, no proud nobility flaunting 
with lordly rank and title, but only men. No 
laws to crush the weak and fortify the strong; 
no grinding tax to gorge the overflowing treas- 
uries of the few; no doors that barred a man, 
but opened for a title. A man was there a man, 
and to kill him was a forfeit of ten camels, no 
matter who his father may have been. And 
women there were cherished and beloved, not 
like dumb animals confined.* They graced the 
daily walks of men and lent their counsel and 
advice, and cheered their sons on stricken fields 
where foreign foemen strove to break the Arab 

*This was before Mohammed cast his blighting shadow 
upon the Arabian women. 



54 Souls of the Infinite 

neck. Such were their homely virtues, but to 
enjoy these sacred privileges the desert bare 
had come to be their only habitat. The gar- 
den spots had all been vanquished by^ the 
strong. 

The soul of Thaddeus had found sweet 
draughts for which it thirsted upon that dry 
and arid plain. The souls that mingled in that 
desert air had brought forth a race of men su- 
perior, by nature's measurements, to any of 
these nobles, lords, or kings. A race so differ- 
ent from this soldier type about us, two hun- 
dred years of such had come and gone. Tower- 
ing monarchies they had built, and kingdoms 
fair in random ruin laid ; but what had it done 
for them? They were positively worse, more 
servile, than when Chinzer left them. 

Do we wonder, then, at the manner of this 
Arab son, or at the feeling which he harbored 
in his breast? Rashid, though born a prince, 
was none the less a man, and now with eyes of 
wonder he surveyed this mighty host of Per- 
sia's, the like of which might not gather once 
in many epochs. Here were a million seven 
hundred thousand men-at-arms, two hundred 
thousand slaves and attendants, eighty thou- 
sand horses, besides camels and chariots, the 



Souls of the Infinite 55 

greatest army Asia ever produced, A prodigi- 
ous multitude of all types, from the war- 
painted savage, with his club, to the Persian 
and Assyrian soldiers, who were partly civil- 
ized and armed with the best weapons of their 
time. These latter were paid, but the great 
bulk of the army served without pay, were im- 
pressed soldiers, forced levies from the various 
subjugated provinces, who fought or marched 
under the Persian lash. 

Rashid walked about among the camps, 
among the chariots and horsemen. There 
seemed for him a strange enticement about this 
marshaling of warriors. The days slipped by, 
his horses all were sold, and horsemen chafing 
to return, but still he lingered. He wandered 
in among the mounted archers; there was a 
silent beckoning about their arms, their straps 
and harness. He hefted a trooper's shield. 
How easily did he slip it on his shoulder! And 
how he fondled in his hand their short Chal- 
dsean cutlass! Does the soul remember, or do 
such peculiar things just happen? But, 
strangest thing of all, Rashid enlisted, hired 
out to fight, to be a brother to those marauding 
ruffians. 

Now it was not the soul that prompted this 



56 Souls of the Infinite 

enlistment. The soul protested bitterly, but 
still he did it. It simply shows that there is no 
accounting for the ways of men ; there is a per- 
versity in their nature which shows up anon 
and gives to them an inclination to revert. He 
straightway went to Otaspes, the Assyrian 
general, made known his rank and his ability, 
and Otaspes made him an attendant of his 
horse. 

This now was autumn, and the army broke 
its camp at Critalla and marched from thence 
to Sardis on the Hermus, for Xerxes had Phoe- 
nician and Egyptian architects to span a bridge 
across the Hellespont, so that he might lead 
his horde of soldiers into Greece. But when he 
had his hosts made ready, and was prepared to 
march with much array across from Sardis, the 
August winds tossed up the Hellespont and 
washed away the bridge. 

Now, this made Xerxes very wroth. He was 
indeed a mighty monarch, and for this mean 
Hellespont to thus thwart his purpose, threw 
him in a rage. He immediately dispatched 
vassals to take the architects who built the 
bridge, and other vassals with shackles to bind 
the Hellespont and scourge it with the lash, 
and bade them also brand it with hot branding- 



Souls of the Infinite 57^ 

irons, and charged those who flogged the 
waters to utter these impious words:* "Thou 
bitter water! Thy master inflicts this punish- 
ment upon thee, because thou hast injured him, 
although thou hadst not suffered any harm 
from him. And King Xerxes will cross over 
thee whether thou wilt or not. It is with jus- 
tice that no man sacrifice to thee, because thou 
art both a deceitful and a briny river." 

We can imagine, with amusement, to what 
extent the briny Hellespont was afflicted with 
the chastisement, or how quickly she soused 
out the branding-irons. But with the poor, 
guiltless architects it was very different. They 
were brought, trembling, before the king. Men 
who, no doubt, were far the intellectual supe- 
riors of the bigoted judge into whose hands 
their fate was cast. They were certainly enter- 
prising barbarians of no small ability, to have 
been able to bridge the surging Hellespont 
with such means and resources as were known 
in that day. But these things weighed for 
nothing with their kingly judge. They were 
condemned to death. 

The discomfited king went into quarters then 
at Sardis, while a new bridge was being built, 
♦Herodotus, ix, 16. 



58 Souls of the Infinite, 

and so it happened that our errant Arab spent 
his first winter amid camp confines. 

But distinctions of rank and military subor- 
dinations sat very loosely upon his shoulders. 
Inconsistency — he had joined; still, he did not 
like these things. The servile obeisance of the 
vassal soldier was to him a thing of baseness, 
and the haughty arrogance of the Persian no- 
bles would make his swarthy brow to kindle. 
Everywhere he mingled, whether among 
Egyptians or Assyrians, his unbroken spirit 
shed an influence of intolerance, of resentment. 
So, after all, perhaps it was not the perversity 
of man, but the hand within the shadows, which 
had scattered such as he among these soldiers. 

Spring came on, and with the first warm 
days the army was again prepared to cross, 
the bridges having been rebuilt. This must 
have been an imposing sight — there in the 
murky morning of history, this warlike host, 
one of the largest the world had ever seen, 
creeping its pontooned way from Asia into 
Europe. 

First, the bridge was strewn with myrtle 
branches and perfumed with incense ; then, just 
as the sun was rising, Xerxes offered up a 
prayer and poured a libation into the sea; also. 



Souls of the Infinite 59 

he threw in a golden bowl and a Persian sword. 
Herodotus says he never could ascertain for a 
certainty whether he did this latter for an offer- 
ing to the sun, or in repentance for having 
scourged the sea. Then, just as the first sun's 
rays kissed the parapets of the bridge, the 
crossing began. 

Foremost, leading the van, were his picked 
soldiers, the ten thousand Persians all wearing 
crowns and all with silver ferrules upon their 
spears. Then followed an immense body of 
vassal troops, with the Persian lash singing 
among their naked legs, to lend them courage - 
Then the horsemen, with purple housings, and 
streamers fluttering from their bridles. Next 
came the sacred chariot of Jupiter, drawn by 
eight white Nisean horses with gorgeous tapes- 
try, and gilded harness flashing in the sun. 
Then came the king, adorned with gold, in his 
chariot of silver, followed by a thousand of his 
bravest Persian soldiers, all with golden ap- 
ples for ferrules upon their spears, and a thou- 
sand of his bravest horsemen. Behind these 
came twenty thousand foot and horse; then, 
with a space left to separate them from the 
king's troops, the throng of all nations promis- 
cuous, with the Persian lash again singing and 



60 Souls of the Infinite 

snajDping. Such a host! For seven days and 
nights continuously the bridge creaked and 
groaned beneath the load. 

What was the true meaning of this massive 
movement? Was there some hidden motive 
animating the pulse-beats of this mighty 
throng — this more than a million souls all 
crowding westward? Was there some super- 
human law impelling this surging flood? Some 
universal purpose permitting this action to be? 
The soul of Thaddeus felt no such tide. 

This was simply a stupendous demonstration 
of the ambitious selfishness of one man and his 
royal associates. The misguiding, for the gain 
of a few, of the restless power in the imthinking 
masses — which is always a danger, and which 
will always be misguided so long as there is 
such a power. How often since has this lesson 
been read to mankind in sorrow! Civilization 
is not a thing which can be built up for the en- 
joyment of a privileged class. It must include 
the race, else is its damnation certain. To ad- 
vance, we must advance the whole. The call of 
destiny is to the race, and whenever the ulti- 
mate Utopia is reached, it will be reached as 
one family. There will be neither Jew nor 
Greek, bound nor free. 



Souls of the Infinite 61 

Well, this mixture of pomp and pagan- 
ism, this blunder of an all-wise providence, 
went down into Greece. Of the fortunes of 
the king you already know, but of the men 
there is something yet to tell. One among the 
many was our errant Arab, now a true soldier 
of fortune. The vengeance of no trampled 
shrine had bent his bow, nor was his bosom kin- 
dled with the wrongs of any country. He was 
simply a pilgrim of the goddess, owning allegi- 
ance to the Persians only as a matter of expe- 
diency, and terminating his respect for their 
laws directly with their possibility of being 
enforced. If his chance was good, a comely 
damsel or a golden prize outweighed the wrath 
of Xerxes or his kingdom. 

This promiscuous host of Asia's was entering 
now a country where knowledge was far ad- 
vanced, where men searched after truth, where 
wisdom was prized above riches, and where 
they spoke of "honor" — a thing which could 
not be measured in golden shekels. The civili- 
zation of Greece spread out about them; they 
gazed on it, but gazed like the unthinking ox. 
The voice which called to them, from the lives 
of these intrepid men, from their f reeborn cus- 
toms, from every rock and rivulet of their 



62 Souls of the Infinite 

rugged country, no man heard — or, hearing, 
could not understand. 

Rashid looked on with his fellow invaders, 
but saw more than they. He wondered at the 
peculiar customs these people observed. They 
crowned their heroes with leaves of the wild- 
olive tree, and they esteemed these crowns of 
rarest value, though the tree was very plentiful. 
The human images they made in stone and 
bronze — the most wonderfully beautiful — filled 
him with admiration. These Greeks seemed to 
live for many things besides feasting and fine 
raiment. 

The soul of Thaddeus saw companions here, 
men who cherished the beautiful and the good ; 
men who had turned their attention from sor- 
did baseness to nobler things, and who fought, 
not for gold or greedy kings, but for principles 
of right, for truths which they had found. It 
stirred so mightily within this Arab's bosom 
that, when their city was burned and the un- 
daunted Greeks betook themselves to their 
ships, he went wandering about the ruins, a 
deep yearning in him to know the strange 
things for which these Grecians lived. 

The pursuing army marched on to the sea- 
shore, but Rashid remained with his general at 



Souls of the In finite 63 

Thebes, for the Thebans were allies of the Per- 
sians. Here he made more earnest effort to 
understand this strange manner of living. He 
could feel a yearning within him for things 
which he knew not of. But he had that thirst 
which is the first great gain. 

So much of his time did he spend inquiring 
after these things, that the horse-boys of 
Otaspes were left to their idleness, and slept 
within their tents while many a noble charger 
neighed unattended in his stall. But Raschid 
was busy, very busy. His soul was groping 
for light, and, besides this, in his inquiring 
search he had become acquainted with a Gre- 
cian girl, lone, the wife of Attagimus, the The- 
ban at whose house he and his general had 
often supped, and something unbidden had 
sprung up in his heart. Nor was it a cold Gre- 
cian something like their marble statues, but a 
warm Arabian kindling, and like the morning 
of their southern sun. It kept continually 
turning him toward this Theban garden, or 
forming a thousand pretexts for messages to 
Attagimus. Many fair women he had seen, 
both Greek and barbarian, but this was an un- 
usual feeling. It grew, in spite of obstacles, 
with every thought. 



64 Souls of the Infinite 

After the battle of Salamis, Xerxes started 
with his army for Thessalia. The courageous 
Greeks had been victorious, and Rashid, in his 
heart, was glad. But he had short opportunity 
to rejoice, for he was smitten sorely with the 
fever, and was soon about to perish. Otaspes 
was indeed sorry. He was loth to lose him, 
because he was an excellent horseman and a 
manly fellow, and despite his lawless hand, 
there was a hidden nobleness about his heart, 
for which Otaspes had formed a friendship. 
But the army must be moved, so he appointed 
a slave to attend his sickness, and left him with 
their ally, Attagimus, at Thebes. 

Thousands of Rashid's fellow-soldiers had 
fallen by this same fever, more than the Greeks 
had slain ; but destiny had appointed different- 
ly for him, so after many days of weariness 
he began to mend. His pallet then the Theban 
moved, from out the camp, to his own garden. 
And, as Rashid lay beneath its shade, in half 
delirium, his eyes would wander o'er its beauty. 

It was like a vdld grove surrounded by a 
wall, and on each side there was a colonnade 
supported by marble pillars. The trees within 
were planted so closely that the foliage inter- 
mingled, and the fluttering of the leaves caused 



Souls of the Infinite 65 

wavy gleams of sunbeams to travel o'er his bed. 
Beside the trees, the woodbine and the ivy 
grew. The woodbine was in blossom, and 
formed crowns upon the branches with its deli- 
cate foliage, while the ivy mantled the brown 
tree-trunks with glossy green. Beneath, dis- 
played their various hues, the narcissus and the 
rose, and the violet with its blue like the calm 
sea. 

Here, with these surroundings, which were 
better far than leach or apotheca, our errant 
soldier grew better fast. But with the abate- 
ment of his body fever returned that throbbing 
feeling in his bosom, and it became another 
fever. lone would daily come to see him, to 
mark the slave's attendance, and with each 
visit, or each gentle touch, this other fever in 
his bosom waxed and burned. 

The summer days sped sweetly o'er the gar- 
den, their zephyrs whispering to the trees. 
They had cooled his parching malady. Otaspes 
awaited him in Thessaly, for now the king had 
gone to Asia. Still he did not go, but illness 
feigned ; and he was sick, but with another ail- 
ment — something the zephyrs could not cool. 
His limbs were strong again, yet to his pallet 
still he kept hy day ; v/e would not say but that 



66 Souls of the Infinite 

he walked about when no one saw. And, Hke a 
truant boy, he would encourage carelessness in 
his slave, just to hear this Greek girl chafe and 
fret about him. 

But something here was growing almost out 
of bounds. He wrongly promised every day 
that he would tell her, but each time opportu- 
nity or courage failed, which only drove this 
fever in his bosom worse, for it no longer was 
a quiet, passive love, content to look and to 
adore, but had become an all-absorbing emo- 
tion, an impetuous passion to possess. 

lone never guessed, or at least we think she 
never guessed, the ardent pow er that was being 
kindled here. That she was kindling here, for 
there was something more than nurse's care, 
prompting her kind attention. lone loved this 
Arab prince, and once as she smoothed his ruf- 
fled pillow, for the wayward slave was gone 
again, she lifted from his brow a raven lock and 
bent and kissed him. Alas! the bounds to all 
his smoldering passion like stubble fell. Why 
did she do it — betray herself, undo her lord's 
command, forswear her sacred vow? Why did 
she! Because she could not help it, for this 
was Phillis standing here, although her name 
was lone, and she was a Greek. 



Souls of the Infinite 67 

VThe wind bloweth whithersoever it listeth," 
and it is hardly easier to bind affections. What 
did the soul of Phillis know of Grecian vows? 
Had not this love four thousand years of prior 
claim? And was it wrong if Rashid strove to 
overstep the law of Greece? Might there not 
be a higher law? What if he lingered long, 
and often, from his heart in earnest, besought 
lone to leave her thoughtless lord? But she 
would not. Because the soul of Phillis, being 
it was a woman's soul, was more by law re- 
stricted, and had not grown with equal pace. 

The war was finished, and what was left of 
the barbarians, a shattered band, went scatter- 
ing back to Asia. They carried with them, 
however, a knowledge of Grecian liberty and 
an evidence of the courage of that liberty. A 
priceless thing. The greatest blessing Greece 
could give, had they been able to appropriate 
it. But the flower that blossomed so profusely 
among the sons of Greece could not take root 
on Asiatic soil. The lesson which these favored 
western souls had solved, and written in Ionian 
blood, their blind barbarian brothers could not 
read. 

So the struggle was for naught, or seemed 
for naught. Some may have read the lesson, 



68 



Souls of the Infinite 




lone 



Souls of tJie Infinite 69 

but perished in its reading, and some through 
distance may have gained a clearer view, but 
on the whole 'twas little that was gained. The 
king, perhaps, was entertained, and some other 
interests may have been woven by the play. 
Time saw an Arab prince renew each year his 
pilgrimage to Greece. Fleet Nejd steeds he 
often brought for gifts to Attagimus. And 
a little dark-haired Grecian boy, an only child, 
joy of his home, played in lone's garden. 



CHAPTER V 

Rashid we left in Arabia, but as soon as 
Mother Earth had claimed her own, her ani- 
mated clay, as soon as the soul was free, we 
find it again in Greece. It had companions 
there, and besides, there was another and a 
stronger tie, that drew it to the shores of Hel- 
las. And, in life's declining time, often as 
lone pondered, something in the garden zephyr 
seemed to fold her, soft and dreamy, pressing 
on her silver tresses gentle kisses and caresses, 
though she guessed not what it was. 

But souls are not in idle felicity maintained ; 
they must grow stronger with duty done, the 
same as we. So Thaddeus took up his burden 
here in Greece, and took it gladly, for his was 
an ambitious soul, and here was opportunity 
a-plenty — examples to encourage, inspiring 
thoughts from minds of native force, precepts 
from intellects that strove to grasp the infinite. 

The gods austere, or exacting destinies, — * 
the powers that hold the mysteries of men, by 

70 



Souls of the Infinite 71 

whatever name we know them, — ^must certainly 
have looked with admiration upon these reso- 
lute sons of Greece, these untiring souls, 
searching the universe for knowledge, exhaust- 
ing every talent, every mental resource to find 
and know the truth. And such lofty heights 
did they attain, such thinking power, their light 
spread out through all the world. They 
marked the way within the realm of thought 
for coming ages. 

What strength, then, did this hungry soul 
take here in Greece! The bonds of ages were 
broke from off it, and it bounded forward like 
a runner free with eager sinews. Two hundred 
years we might have watched its rapid strides 
from shrouded barbarism until they seemed, al- 
most, to reach the bounds of human under- 
standing, and then, — whether there is a limit to 
the might of mortal placed, or whether its fiery 
energy was spent, — it seemed it could go no 
farther, and slowly with the ebbing current of 
the time began to drift. In the latter days of 
Macedonia we find it a student of Logates, in 
the town of Corinth. 

His class of fellow-students numbered eight. 
They all wore tunics, very white, with golden 
girdles about their waist, and had their hair 



72 Souls of the Infinite 

fantastically arranged. Had you saluted them 
some morning as they passed to school, fresh 
from their homes, you would have seen the 
polish of a Chesterfield, save that the style of 
clothes was very simple, and that their feet 
were bare. And had you listened to their dis- 
course as they waited round their lecture place, 
which was a corner in the public square, it 
probably would have made you think of Ox- 
ford, Yale or Harvard. 

They spoke with poise and ease, and much 
abstraction, cautious to make assertions, ever 
ready with many tripping questions and free 
and quick to ridicule. They doubted Plato's 
Phsedo, and they held that good old Aristotle 
was most probably mistaken in many things he 
said. If Stoic virtue was the only good, they 
preferred to have it proven, and it was no easy 
task to prove to them a theorem. A very skep- 
tic class, indeed, these pupils of Logates, and 
quite irreverent. They called their tutor, in 
his absence, "Old Ipse Dixit," not for any 
great thing which he had said, but for the 
whiskers which he wore. 

On this particular morning the class seemed 
agitated and in no frame of mind to listen to 
equations. There had been trouble in the town 



Souls of the Infinite 73 

the night before, and now one of their senior 
members was recounting the atrocious acts of 
Sparta. 

"You see, fellow-students," said he, "these 
greedy Spartans hope, by paying court to 
Rome, to gather increased power imto them- 
selves. But their folly is only equaled by their 
stupidity, and they will receive a rude awaken- 
ing. For the hand of this plebeian mistress is 
not in Peloponnese or northern Greece for 
any good save for her own. Her base perfidy 
is too painfully apparent. I would rather see 
fair Corinth become a brother to these despised 
Helots of ours than to embrace this proffered 
friendship, this hypocrisy of Rome. Why 
should they be so deceived? What she has 
done to Macedonia, will she not do to Corinth 
and to Sparta? I say, fellow students, these 
peace commissioners have Roman breastplates 
beneath their togas, and these olive branches 
she pretends to be distributing among the 
states of Greece are but the forerunners of 
Roman javelins and Roman laws. She is not 
trying to foster harmony among us, but to dis- 
seminate dissension." 

"It is exactly so, as you have said, dear Pho- 
sas," replied a brother student, "and if only 



74 Souls of the Infinite 

now could rise within the bounds of Corinth 
some son who had within his bosom the iron 
spirit of our fathers, would not there be a stif- 
fening of these Dorian necks and a fleeting pic- 
ture of the hinder parts of Roman legates? 
But alas! The times are changed. Our men 
have vanished. Sparta has only whimpering 
women within her gates, and Corinth has 
brought forth only daughters. The fiery blood 
of Greece is gone, and in its place flows only 
milky water. Our northern kinfolks have al- 
ready meekly placed their heads beneath the 
Roman yoke, and Sparta now is kneeling for 
her load. Such menial submission ! It should 
make the marble grave-stones of our ancestors 
to weep. I, for one, the last son of the house 
of Cypselidse, shall go to Alexandria and there 
bury in philosophic study the memory of these 
humiliating times." 

Rashid, or, rather, Miltias, for his name was 
now Miltias, sat silent ; he was the youngest of 
the school, though not by any means the least, 
and junior courtesy required it. He had in 
abundance that smoldering hatred for the Ro- 
mans, and had been one of the foremost rioters 
of the night before, for which he harbored 
many bruises now beneath his tunic. He also 



Souls of the Infinite 75 

expected to leave Corinth upon the coming 
summer for Syracuse to finish mathematics, 
but things were so unsettled here. They had 
been so for months, and he had pondered much 
the conditions of the times. Why was it 
Greece was slowly slipping from her former 
place? She had produced the greatest minds 
and towered above the nations of the world, but 
now no more did Grecian thought create, and 
her national foundation was crumbling beneath 
her feet. Where was the fault? Was there no 
more within the book of life to read, or had her 
early readers lost the page? Perhaps she had 
built unevenly; had paid too little heed to the 
material things; forgot the homely practical 
for metaphysics' lofty flight. Perhaps she had 
been too intent on universal good, had given to 
the world her energetic soul and now was suf- 
fering in her body, and suffering broke her 
spirit. He did not believe one iron-willed son 
of Corinth, nor many such, could bolster up the 
dying state of Greece. The fault of that was 
in the framework, which had allowed the tim- 
ber of the superstructure to decay. 

This was the early spring, and Miltias went 
not to Syracuse that coming summer, but to 
Rome, and not to study mathematics, but a 



76 Souls of the hi finite 

captive for the Roman market. Perfidious 
Latium had cast aside her mask, replaced her 
peace commissions by her legions, and fair Cor- 
inth was a smoldering heap of ashes. 

With many other captives in the market- 
place he stood. A huge tablet, fastened to his 
tunic, proclaimed in Roman letters that his 
name was Miltias; that he was nineteen years 
old; of good parentage; educated in all the 
knowledge of the Greeks, and that he had been 
a pupil of Logates. He was purchased by 
Q. Aurelius Critolius, a wealthy Roman noble- 
man. 

It is hard to imagine the initiatory effect of 
such a radical transformation, from unrestrict- 
ed liberty and wealth to the loss of everything 
■ — home, family, and, we might say, individu- 
ality. But these Greeks were so predominated 
by intellect, which tends to minimize obligatory 
or unavoidable physical hardship. Miltias was 
an advanced type of such a man. 

There is danger, under pleasant physical 
conditions, in too rapid a rise to too lofty intel- 
lectual heights. The mind seems to see too 
suddenly the naked vanity of life ; human enig- 
mas are shattered, and it grows dizzy. Ambi- 
.tion seems to have no further attraction. 



Souls of the Infinite 77 

I\Iortal hopes appear unreliable. The Humble 
aspirations of life seem insignificant. Custom 
loses its prestige. The mind easts about with- 
out compass or anchor; destination and land- 
marks are lost. There is danger for the soul in 
such a condition. The personal equation may- 
cause it to revert or even to annihilate itself. 

Miltias had begun to faintly feel this myste- 
rious delirium, and while now he sorrowed for 
his kin and Corinth, he may have halfway wel- 
comed the change for himself, as something 
new which might prove more substantial. 

The treatment accorded these educated 
slaves was often very good, for the Romans 
had always a deal of respect and veneration 
for Greek learning; though of the laboring 
slaves it was the most drastic, they had become 
so plentiful. 

Critolius owned ten thousand slaves himself. 
He cultivated two immense tracts of land in 
Picenum, besides his estate in Etruria, where 
was also his country villa. Young Miltias be- 
came his secretary, and as such was soon famil- 
iar with all his dealings. He was a gigantic 
schemer, and most of his private business was 
in connection with the government. The rec- 
ords, which Miltias kept in charge, showed 



78 Souls of the Infinite 

much irregularity and dishonest practice; these 
vast tracts which he held in Picenum did not 
rightfully belong to Critolius, but were gov- 
ernment land, having been ceded to the Roman 
State when the Picenum people rebelled. The 
Critolii, like many other wealthy Roman fami- 
lies, had at first, many years before, simply 
leased the land, but now laid claim to it as 
private property. 

Just now this Critolius was extremely busy, 
and there were many meetings of senators and 
Optimates at his Etrurian villa. His interest, 
which was similar to that of other Optimates, 
was this: Some seven thousand acres of the 
land which he claimed in Picenum had been, 
under government supervision, leased to small 
farmers, Picenum families who had tilled it as 
their own before the government confiscation. 
But government supervision was irksome to 
these greedy Optimates. It was more profit- 
able to till the land with slaves, if only they 
could drive off these farmers. To bring this 
about peaceably, the Optimistic class, which 
was mostly the rich landholders, were engineer- 
ing a law through the Roman Senate which 
was called "The Populares' Right to Title." 
It provided that the poor farmer, by simply 



Souls of the Infinite 79 

proving a certain number of years' residence 
upon the land, could recover his former title. 

The law appeared very good to the Popu- 
lares, and by this bait the Optimates drew 
great numbers of them in before the courts. 
They were compelled to bring their families 
for witnesses. But the courts dragged the mat- 
ters along, and once off the land, and posses- 
sion gone, the poor farmer never got back 
again. 

Miltias spent four years, active, in the inter- 
ests of Critolius, for his persistent soul would 
not be quiet. He made Critolius powerful, he 
acquired power himself. Still he was not satis- 
fied; a nameless wanting, which he pursued, 
ever evaded him. Something was distressing 
and disturbing. He saw the workings of such 
laws as this, together with other more grasping 
tactics, which he had aided, gradually dividing 
the wealth of Italy among a few greedy, over- 
rich landlords ; gradually filling her cities with 
a discouraged, poverty-stricken laboring class. 
He saw men of prominence, wholly without 
scruples, grabbing for added riches. He saw 
lawmakers and judges selling their honor for 
gold, the sacred temples of justice profaned 
without discretion. He saw the rulers de- 



80 Souls of the Infinite 

praved with plundered wealth, the people de- 
bauched with poverty. 

For four years his assiduous soul had been 
weighing the life of Rome, but there was noth- 
ing new here, nothing substantial. It was in- 
finitely worse than Greece. There seemed to 
be no right, no honor nor manhood here ; every- 
thing prostituted for gold. Not one sacred 
thing remaining on which to hang a hope. 

He had pondered long upon the backward 
step of Greece, but here the riddle was easily 
read. They had been searching in lofty ab- 
straction for the true object of life. Rome was 
groveling in the basest material for that same 
object. The hope of Greece had been blighted, 
he believed, through faulty framework in her 
democracy ; but here was a country wholly per- 
verted, whose government was about to fall 
from its own rottenness. His comprehensive 
mind had inquired diligently, had reasoned ex- 
haustively. He had seen people who loved 
peace despoiled by the arm of the alien. He 
had seen the despoilers spoil their own. He 
had pursued with earnestness the path of 
knowledge; he had labored incessantly for 
power. He had possessed wealth and received 
honor as the reward of efficiency; yet all had 



Souls of the Infinite 81 

been marred — or marred itself, was misubstan- 
tial, insufficient. Where, then, was the abiding 
good to be attained; where, then, was peace of 
mind; where, then, was truth? His soul was 
distraught and bewildered; that vacant de- 
lirium was returning again. 

Critolius sent him this summer, with rein- 
forcements, to his nephew, Satureius, who was 
encamped with Roman legions upon the Rhine, 
in northern Gaul. Here he saw the frontier, 
the outposts of the arms of Rome, the van of 
her invasion. His active mind quickly realized 
its significance, its relation to the whole. Rome, 
dissipated and fraught with internal strife, was 
of necessity finding new outlets to divert her 
energy; external resistance to combine herself 
at home. Instinctively, to prolong her life she 
was enlarging her border. But he read plainly 
the end of this. 

About the camp the valley woods hung sear 
and brown. Miltias, the Corinthian, now a 
centurion of mighty Rome, wandered beneath 
its tangled shade alone. His discouraged soul 
was heedless, life seemed wholly weighed and 
wanting; knowledge, wealth, power, all that 
Greece or Rome could give, was lacking; 
peace of mind he had not found. Around him 



82 Souls of the Infinite 

fell the silent shadows of the past, the wind 
among the branches sang the same old song of 
ages, o'er him folded the solenm stillness of 
the wilderness. Somewhere locked within its 
ancient depths there must be peace. Aimlessly 
he wandered musing thus — but hark! What 
was that distant note which sounded from the 
river, so still, so distant, 'twas like the faintest 
echo borne? It must have been a rustle from 
the trees. But no — something within him 
stirred; he surely felt it. 

It comes again; and not so indistinct. 'Tis 
wafted by the stream from far, far down the 
river, the rugged lands of the wild Teutons. It 
is a call, enticing. It echoes round and round 
his discouraged soul in gently whispering ed- 
dies. Something within him seemed to kindle. 
The restless soul was harking back. 

Again the river brings it to him, more plain, 
more mellow and more coaxing: 

"There's welcome here. There's freedom. 
There's homely, honest manhood with native 
pride. Sweet nature for a kind, caressing 
mother. Come !" 

His soul goes out in answer to the call, and 
Miltias, young but old, followed the beckoning, 
off, off in that wilding wild. Forgot his weary 



Souls of the Infinite 83 

mind — and the quiet of the trackless German 
forest covered all. 

The same which taught him first and sent 
him forth, burning with energy, had called him, 
tired and hopeless, back to her peaceful bosom. 



CHAPTER VI 

In the year 732 of our Lord, the 110th of the 
Hegira, the fifteenth of the reign of Leo III, 
the Isaurian; in fact, it might have had an in- 
definite number of dates. Dates are only arti- 
ficial things, made by man for his own conveni- 
ence, and have nothing whatever else to do with 
time. This planet of ours goes on making its 
laps around the sun, and they might just as 
well be enumerated one, one, one, for they are 
all the same. One year is no different from 
another, no farther from a beginning, no near- 
er to an end. This process is a ceaseless thing. 
You might probably be willing to take an oath 
that this is the year of our Lord 1911, but it 
would be a false oath, because this year has no 
number. You could just as honestly say it is 
the year one, for time changes not, but shines 
on continually. Thus the fallaciousness of our 
most established human customs. Of course, 
it is quite convenient to call it 1911, or some 

84 



Souls of the Infinite 85 

other generally accepted name, so as to corre- 
late human events; but do not think that the 
years go on piling up, because they do not. 

Well, in this year 732 a cloud was lowering 
on the southern horizon of Europe. The cres- 
cent of Mohammed, supported by the fiery zeal 
of religious fanaticism, which had cast its wax- 
ing shadow from the Bosphorus through Asia 
and Africa to northern Spain, seemed now 
about to round into a full eclipse. 

Three armies of those once invincible Roman 
legions had tried in vain to check their rapid 
progress. Alexandria and the descendants of 
boastful Carthage had been swept like chaff 
before the wild enthusiasm of these desert war- 
riors. 

The Gothic guards of Spain and southern 
France had been cut to pieces by their crooked 
scimitars, and Europe lay trembling before this 
sable Saracen shadow. Their swift coursers 
were about to overrun all Christendom. 

But there was a rumbling beyond the Rhine, 
a gathering of clans. Those sturdy Teutons 
were coming from their bogs and marshes, 
from their steppes and from their forests. 
Girt in their rawhide harness, with heavy mace 
and whetted battle-ax they strode out upon the 



86 Souls of the Infinite 

plains of Tauris to cast their rustic valor 
athwart the progress of these Moslem hordes. 

The day was long upon that trodden field, 
where hung the future course of history. 
JNIany a German fell, and many a sinking Sar- 
acen found his deluded paradise in sodden 
Frankish soil. The struggle locked in carnage, 
and those Semitic sabers cut furiously, but 
their desert god could not sustain them beneath 
the awful blows of these rugged Aryan 
yeomen. 

Our soul of Thaddeus was in the turmoil, 
though now he bore a German name. With 
Miltias, weary of the way of nations, it had 
thought to hide itself among these pristine for- 
est folks. But it could not be. This abiding 
place of mortals is too circumscribed and their 
interests too related to allow any member to lay 
down his hand. For the rest play on, and 
whoever is not there to tend his interests in the 
game will lose his heritage. The other players 
will it divide among themselves. The whole 
family will not, cannot, be quiet ; so, therefore, 
each must play — must play for himself, and 
must play for himself that is to come. 

So we see it here. The soul of Thaddeus 
could not go back to rest, could not live again, 



Souls of the Infinite 87 

unmolested, that wild, free life which had once 
been his. That was gone. The course of hu- 
man events had buried it. And, though he may 
have been willing to take his share of the un- 
cultured German's burden, that was not suf- 
ficient. The Germans must take their share of 
the Teuton's burden, and the Teutons must 
take their share of the world's burden. So it is 
we find him here again upon the stage. 

He is, however, a more rugged soul than 
when we lost him, more prone to consider the 
physical aspect of things, and far less prone to 
call any man master, or even leader. These 
Teutons had an indomitable love of personal 
liberty. They also had a love and respect for 
women, which was not in the men of Italy or 
Greece, which revived in our soldier a buried 
remnant of his Arabian life. 

From the victorious fields of Tauris he now 
looked out on the world of action, the world 
which he had left, but it showed little attrac- 
tiveness to him. He saw the government of 
Italy fallen. Its rottenness had overtaken it. 
He saw petty chiefs of Western Europe 
wrangling over the fragments of the dying 
Empire. He saw the people trodden under 
foot, neglected and oppressed, valued onljj as 



88 Souls of the Infinite 

so many conscripts who might be hurried to 
battle. His own experience was still in his 
memory, so now that his duty was done, the 
terror of Islam broken and the danger past, 
he turned him again to the forest. Away to 
the north he would go, deeper than before, far, 
far beyond the Rhine, into the land lapped by 
the German Ocean. 

This, however, afforded only a momentary 
respite. The hand of man pressed hard be- 
hind him, and the hand of nature stood hard 
before. This was a bleak and barren shore, 
not like the fertile forest he had left. 

The broken country roughly fitted his un- 
broken spirit. He loved peace, but not at so 
dear a cost. He turned at bay, and we see him 
leaving the Danish coast. Let others stand 
those rugged realms who could do no better. 

He is the shipmate of a long, dark, ugly- 
looking craft, the Gefion, On her prow is a 
huge dragon's head, with gaping jaws, and her 
sail is wide and striped with red. A red pen- 
nant also flutters from her masthead, for she is 
a pirate. The soul of Thaddeus was now within 
the bosom of a Viking. 

The Gefion's prow was turned to the south- 
svard. Behind her was nothing but unsheltered 



Souls of the Infinite 89 

shores, and there was at least a hope before. 
The wave which had traveled over Europe had 
reached a barrier and the crest was breaking 
back upon itself. 

For one hundred years the home of Thad- 
deus was on the billow, from the German main 
to the coast of Italy. And many a crimson 
spot marked the landing of the Gefion, and 
many a heap of ashes marked her departure. 
These wild Viking pirates, men without a coun- 
try, crowded off the too narrow limits of the 
rapid-growing human family. They were still 
free, however, these rovers of the rolling sea, 
who recked not for state or land, nor kissed no 
petty monarch's hand ; their kingdom's bounds 
their galley's keel, their law the terror of their 
steel. 

So he lived ; but this, too, must have an end, 
and in the tenth century we find him one of a 
settlement of Norsemen in Normandy, France. 
He is a liegeman of the renowned RoUo, and 
his name is Bjorn. 

In Normandy at this time we have only free- 
men and their leaders, but over the rest of Eu- 
rope we see a rapidly forming system which 
might be called a feudalistic gradation of so- 
ciety. The thing in its incipiency may have 



90 Souls of the Infinite 

been of necessity ; but ere it was fairly started, 
it was diverted and became simply a marking- 
off, a separation of rulers from the ruled. 

Europe was quieting now ; society was crys- 
tallizing, so to speak; it was sort of an adjust- 
ing time. The strong and those who had an 
advantage were climbing into the saddle, and 
laws were being fastened to the people's heads, 
like reins to a horse's bridle. We have seen 
something similar in ancient Chaldea, only that 
was more military, more the relation of captive 
to conqueror. This is more civil and more in 
detail. 

About the year 916, for the sake of peace 
Normandy's chief accepted a tenureship from 
King Charles of France. It was hardly a 
tenureship, for they already had the land and 
seemed able to hold it. It was more a form, to 
end hostilities, but it brought Normandy into 
the feudal system. By its conditions RoUo was 
to marry the king's daughter and to accept 
Christianity — he and his men. 

He talked it over with Bjorn: — This Chris- 
tianity, a queer cult which had come up from 
Rome, — they at Rome purporting to have re- 
ceived it from some prophet in the East. 
There was little ceremony connected with its 



Souls of tJie Infinite 91 

acceptance, mainly the acknowledgment of 
their God to be greater than Odin, and being 
baptized in water by one of their priests. 
Bjorn had little compunction about this; he had 
never received any particular aid from Odin 
that he could remember, and he quite frequent- 
ly baptized himself. 

King Charles, however, demanded further, 
that RoUo should kiss his toe. "Ne si, be Got" 
(Not so, by God), answered the indignant 
Norseman. At last, however, he consented 
that it should be done by proxy, and Bjorn was 
appointed to the task. Such a performance 
as this was not in the least agreeable to Viking 
nature, and when Bjorn did kiss King Charles' 
toe he jerked it up so roughly that the king 
was thrown over backwards, which event is still 
told in Normandy. 

The teaching of this new cult appeared very 
good. It condemned many of the cruel things 
men did, and taught brotherly love and charity. 
The soul of Thaddeus embraced it warmly, 
though it doubted if the prophet really said a 
great many of the other things which it taught. 
Nor did these teachings appear to it to be of 
supernatural origin; on the contrary, they ap- 
peared very natural and huxnane, quite like a 



92 Souls of the Infinite 

Grecian philosopher had taught and given his 
life for, ages before, but whom the people 
never accepted. However, the teachings were 
much better than those they already had, and 
the prophet must have been a very great and 
good man. They were bound to result in good 
if men followed them. 



One hundred and fifty years rolled round. 
Normandy is dotted with feudal castles. The 
seventh chief to hold the tenureship is William 
the Great. He is now called a duke, and the 
people are called Normans. Bjorn, the fourth 
descendant, whose name has softened into Jean, 
is one of his chief retainers. 

The people of Europe are Christianized and 
divided off into unstable nations of French, 
German, Spanish, Italian, etc. Feudalism has 
become thoroughly established; so much so, 
that the rulers of these various peoples are not 
the kings, but the powerful dukes and barons. 
The people themselves are of so little conse- 
quence that the current history rarely mentions 
them at all, save to incidentally state that a 
revolt of the German peasants received sum- 
mary justice, or that an uprising in France was 



Souls of the Infinite 03 

stamped out and the malcontents punished 
(which meant exterminated) , or that the com- 
moners of Normandy, complaining, asking for 
their old-time rights as Norsemen, the peti- 
tioners' heads were cut off and sent back among 
the people for an example. The people in gen- 
eral had absolutely no rights at all which the 
nobles felt bound to respect. 

We said the people of Europe were divided 
off into Frenchmen, Germans, Spanish, Ital- 
ians, etc. Jean saw it thus, but to the soul of 
Thaddeus all Europe contained just two 
classes : the people and their rulers. The sepa- 
ration was now complete; not one tie of race, 
blood, or anything else, was recognized between 
them, save only the relation of master and ser- 
vant. This was recognized and rigidly en- 
forced. The great bulk of the inhabitants, who 
had once enjoyed comparative liberty and a 
voice in choosing their leaders, were now on a 
parallel with the beasts of the field, or beneath 
them. The rulers showed them no respect or 
consideration whatever. A French or Spanish 
noble was just as contented and just as often 
to be found upon a German or English duke- 
dom as on his own, and vice versa. It made no 
difference to the rulers — they were all one f am- 



94 Souls of the Infinite 

ily, uncles, aunts, nephews, brothers, cousins, 
all related; but the subjects, the commoners, 
they were as alien as the inhabitants of Mars — ' 
any of their blood was a taint, a vulgar stain. 

Thus the soul saw it, and this Christianity, 
from which it had hoped so much, this church 
of Rome, which came preaching charity and the 
essential equality of high and low, now owned 
one-half of the land of Europe, and was using 
its power to uphold the unrighteous condition 
of things. The teachings of the Eastern 
prophet were good in themselves, but they had 
been saddled and made to draw a load of privi- 
leged greed. 

This was the summer in which William the 
Great prepared the invasion of England. 
Duke William is sometimes known by another 
name because of his birth, his mother, Harlotta, 
never having been married — ^but that need not 
concern us. He was the Duke of Normandy 
by right of title and by right of the fittest. His 
father sanctioned his succession and could have 
removed the stigma from his name had he so 
desired, but it would not have changed his love 
for Harlotta, nor his affections for his son. It 
was merely an existing custom which he chose 
not to keep. 



I 



Souls of the Infinite 



95 



^'"■^^r 



?V 
















A royal hunt 



96 Souls of the Infinite 

Normandy was this time marshaling her 
might; these Viking descendants, whose blood 
had not yet fitly cooled, were gathering for ac- 
tivity. Jean and his fellows, the St. Fontain 
Knights, were at Duke William's castle, Fa- 
laise, where was the flower of his army gath- 
ered. Gay pomp and courteous chivalry, in- 
deed, adorned that castle court; knights with 
dancing plumes were waiting; gauntleted cava- 
liers knelt low in gilded trappings; crested 
lords and stately barons bowed there to 
beauty's favor, paid royal fealty to blushing 
fair. The castle rang with merriment, and 
many a lively tilt was there to entertain, for 
William offered trophies rare for the most dex- 
terous knight-at-arms. 

It was the gay St. Fontain horsemen who 
carried off near every prize. Among all the 
Norman nobles they had no peers for daring, 
reckless gallantry, theirs was the lightest heart 
and theirs the heaviest hand. Alike they rode 
for love or glory, these troopers from the 
south, matchless knights in foraying frays or 
festal tournaments. And many a royal token 
had they won, and many a courtly dame had 
smiled to see them wheel their mettled chargers 
round. Right valiant fellows they, whose 



Souls of the Infinite 



97 




One lone knight rode out before the battle jolnea, tossing 

his sword in air 



98 Souls of the Infinite 

hearts hung on their saddle-bows. One of 
their company it was who led the Norman 
charge up Hastings' hill of carnage. Perhaps 
in history you have read how one lone knight 
rode out before the battle joined, tossing his 
sword in air, and singing songs of Roland's 
stirring deeds — like a dancing bubble upon 
the bosom of a bursting storm — and how the 
astonished English gazed in stolid wonder- 
ment at such careless courage, such heedless 
dexterity. 

Jean was twenty years old when the battle 
of Hastings was fought ; after that he lived in 
England, a liegeman of Count Eustace, in 
Wessex. For fifty years he led the feudal life 
of that martial age, a law unto himself, render- 
ing nominal homage to his lord and exacting 
service from those beneath him. 

It was not a life with the civilized comforts 
of to-day; still, for the ruling class it was quite 
easy, quite romantic, those courtly castle days. 
The wandering minstrel came to hall and 
tower, an ever-welcome guest. Bards sang in 
castle-hold of knighthood's dauntless deeds. 
The harp in sweeter tones beguiled the while, 
in days of peace to bid the warrior smile; 
or, when in lovelorn notes its softer ac- 



Souls of the Infinite 99 

cents fell, the maiden's cheek to dry or heaving 
breast to swell. 

For the toilers, however, this was a distress- 
ing age. Their rulers took from them the 
products of their labors, and their liberties as 
well. The reason why they endured such treat- 
ment, without continued rebellion, was because 
men then believed it to be right, or partly right. 
They recognized the nobility as superior beings 
with rightful privileges, and man has stood 
volumes of abuse when he believed that it was 
right. 

About the time that Jean was fifty years old 
a strange wave of sacred enthusiasm spread 
wildly over Western Europe. It was a conse- 
quence of this new cult, Christianity, which the 
soul had watched, and was actively promul- 
gated by an able fanatic, Peter the Hermit, 
who preached everjrwhere that men should take 
up arms and become literal soldiers of the 
Cross, should engage in strife and bloodshed 
at the behest of that lowly Nazarene who him- 
self taught only love and mercy, and who said 
to his disciple Peter, "Put up thy sword." 

The contagion seized all classes; lord and 
liegeman, knave and nob^e, flocked to enroll 
themselves beneath this banner of the Cross. 



100 Souls of the Infinite 

Ere the year was spent eighty thousand men 
and women were gathered about this preaching 
monk, eager to be led against the sacrilegious 
infidel. 

The soul looked on the motley columns 
marching off to victory, going to retrieve the 
sacred sepulchre, pressing forward with right- 
eous indignation to wreak vengeance and 
slaughter, then to return with palms of blessed- 
ness and great rejoicing. Or, might they not 
return, but strew the Hellespontic strand ^\Aih. 
Christian bones ? Could it be possible that the 
gods were playing them another trick, like to 
the ancient Hebrews and Assyrians? 

The soul of Thaddeus meditated. It was 
doubtful of this new God, and "His Vicar here 
on earth," who was consecrating movements 
bearing so many earmarks of marauding ex- 
peditions. Soldiers, with little devoutness, 
were everywhere turning to these movements 
with such fervored zeal. It appeared to be a 
thing meet for much consideration. 

Man, from the very first, had always been 
prone to worship. Why was it? Was there 
some co-responsive element planted in his na- 
ture, which instinctively turned to God? The 
soul, upon careful analysis, could find no such 



Souls of the Infinite 101 

element, but rather this worshipfulness ap- 
peared to be a kind of reaction, or reflection, 
from his own deficiency. Man measures all 
things by himself, and where he feels his own 
deficiencies he attributes to some external thing 
an absence of these deficiencies, a fulfillment. 
And to just the extent that he feels his own 
weakness he glories in and worships the com- 
plete thing. If his own wants are simple and 
the deficiencies he feels are of a rudimentary 
type, then a very simple thing will do him for 
a god. The savage can attribute sufficient 
completeness to a stone, or tree, or flame, to 
worship it. As soon, however, as he finds defi- 
ciencies in his god, or his increased knowledge 
of human wants enables him to imagine a more 
complete thing, he discards the former god. 
It ceases to inspire worship in him. Man was 
one time awed by the heavenly bodies. He 
then projected there a fulfillment of his own 
imperfection and worshiped them. Later, he 
imagined a more complete thing which con- 
trolled these bodies, and his worship was imme- 
diately transferred to it. He was then quite 
undeveloped, however, and desired something 
more tangible, not so distant, so he fashioned 
earthly images or accepted human characters 



102 Souls of the Infinite 

as symbolical of that power and worshiped 
them. But as fast as these images of saints and 
virgins proved ineffectual, or these characters 
of popes and priests showed defects, he dimin- 
ished his worship for them. Shortly he would 
have left only one human character, and the 
power itself, to whom he could render complete 
devotion. These would probably prove quite 
substantial, because the one was no longer ac- 
tive and the other was afar off, which condi- 
tions hindered the observation of defects, and 
allowed man to add, from time to time, more 
completeness to them, as his own knowledge 
increased. Both, however, in time, the soul be- 
lieved, would cease to be objects of worship, 
becoming objects of admiration. 

This desire for a god, — this negative deplora- 
tion of deficiencies in mankind, — the soul ob- 
served, also operating in another and more sim- 
ple way. It was man's veneration for a great 
character or a hero, which is a magnifying in 
the hero of the absence of a deficiency which 
the venerator feels in himself. And in just the 
proportion that the worshiper feels himself the 
equal of the worshiped, does his veneration 
change to respect and regard. 

Morality originally had nothing to do with 



Souls of the Infinite 103 

God. The soul could remember when the gods 
cared nothing for what men did to one another. 
Morality, the idea of right and wrong, grew up 
by itself, a resulting consequence of pain — 
first, physical ; later, mental. It developed into 
a varying code which this last God had adopt- 
ed, making it obligatory upon his followers. 

But this is tedious. Let us turn again to 
Jean, the Norman nobleman, descendant of a 
Viking, custodian of the soul of Thaddeus. 
He now is old. The mark of time is on his 
frosty temples. His heart, once warm and 
bounding, is beating a slow tattoo. Unsteady 
holds a staff, the hand that once could break an 
iron band. Short is the might of man. His 
life, — the world for him, — is closing like a day 
that's done. He is going to a long, long rest, 
but the soul must labor on. 



CHAPTER VII 

Five hundred years and more have passed. 
The soul of Thaddeus has been carried through 
tke rise of the barons, through the reign of the 
Plantagenets, the civil strife of the Roses, the 
Tudor monarchies, down to the House of 
Stuart. The vicissitudes of fortune had been 
many. He had risen with the obstinate, insub- 
ordinate barons, fallen through civil strife 
and the iron rule of kings, and now was bereft 
of land and title. 

Under the Edwards he was a country squire, 
but the existence was a continual struggle. 
Tke grasping rulers were never satisfied, and 
every harvest saw the toiler's bin grow smaller. 
When Richard came to the throne, the country- 
folk petitioned for a redress of their burdens. 
They had their labor and something worse for 
their pains; seven thousand of them were 
hanged and the rest stood meekly by. The soul 
was astounded. Where was their Teuton 
blood? Why would they not defend them- 



Souls of the Infinite 105 

selves ? A patriot hero labored with the men of 
Essex; a parish father exhorted the Kentish 
farmers — equahty the burden of their gospel — 
"When Adam delved and Eve span, who was 
then the gentleman?" 

But it was of no avail. They could not 
see. Another custom of centuries' growth 
had crusted over the minds of men. They 
held their kingly despot in reverence, believed 
in his inviolate right, and gazed in stupid 
fear while home and field were wasted. This 
fungoid custom had sapped the fire from out 
their Saxon veins. The soul lamented. If for 
one moment they could have stood by Clovis in 
the stubborn shoes of their wild ancestors, how, 
then, would they have redressed these griev- 
ances! But custom had them enthralled, their 
hoe-handles had calloused over their indignant 
spirit. 

The discouraged soul longed to leave these 
trampled haunts of bruised and broken men, 
but there was nowhere to go. It must toil on, 
and hope that some day these Anglo-Saxon 
Teutons would awake. 

By the time James I was crowned, the peo- 
ple seemed more deluded than before. They 
had become so accustomed to the abuse of kings 



106 Souls of the Infinite 

that now they attributed to them divinity ; but 
this was a signal of the dawn, for, though many 
believed it, many more would not believe. 

Thaddeus was now a yeoman, a Butler ten- 
ant in Hampshire, near the New Forest, a 
landmark of a ruthless king. His name was 
Thomas Watkins. 

He was poor, this Thomas Watkins, though 
not from waste or indolence, for he was thrifty 
and industrious — so had his father been before 
him ; but his goods were taken from him. Not 
literally pillaged, you understand, but taken 
legally: taxes, direct and indirect, tithes and 
rentals. All lawful and right. The royal 
courts, with eminent royal judges, had decided 
so. 

Things were grievous, indeed, but Thomas 
Watkins was a loyal subject and a good 
churchman. He hoped His Highness would 
soon become more considerate; at any rate it 
was wrong to take up arms against one's king. 
He prayed God daily to guide and direct their 
Royal Sovereign and to replenish him with the 
grace of His Holy Spirit. So did ten thou- 
sand other loyal subjects. There were fanat- 
ics and Puritans who preached resistance, but 
that was sinful. The church taught submis- 



J 



Souls of the Infinite 107 

sion, the bishops and abbots taught it; God 
himself admonished, "to be in subjection to the 
powers that be," and "to render tribute to 
Csesar." 

True, this tribute was heavy; the king was 
demanding fabulous sums, was multiplying his 
arbitrary proclamations, increasing these royal 
courts, which were authorizing more "imposi- 
tions." But what could be done? The sanc- 
tity of the courts must not be questioned, nor 
could the king be taken to account. He was 
the ruler appointed by God. 

What God, asked the soul, and what courts, 
these Royal Exchequers and Star Chamber 
things, shrines of justice, established to give 
injustice a legal foundation, filled with busy, 
subtle serpents of the law, who would vend 
either truth or fallacy, before whom the cour- 
ageous John Hamilton was arraigned and con- 
demned ? What a farce, what a travesty ! And 
this ecclesiastic court of High Commission, 
which was making blankets of church dogmas 
to cover temporal rottenness, which was using 
church creed to support falsehood ! 

These things, however, did not shake the 
faith of Thomas Watkins. He was a sober, 
orthodox man, who believed in conformity and 



108 Souls of the Infinite 

the established church ; who accepted the litany 
and the prayer-book, took the "communion," 
observed his fast days, contributed his "Peter's 
pence," paid his parish tax — a devout, law- 
abiding citizen, subject of James I of England. 

His landlord often dealt right harshly with 
him, for though he was a freeman, vassal to no 
one, still the condition of his tenancy made him 
very dependent, and the landlord was a master 
in every sense but name. Watkins must leave 
his own fields or neglect his own meager har- 
vest at the beck and call of this owner of the 
ground. And slight was his recourse, no mat- 
ter what the exaction, or how roughly he was 
used. 

"Damn you, Watkins," his noble landlord 
would say, "this is a devilish crop. Next year 
you will do better, or get nothing, you scurvy, 
clod-pated rascal. I have a mind now to turn 
you over to the gaoler for debt." 

Watkins knew the horrible condition of a 
debtor in the English jails, so worked the 
harder. His was a life filled with privation 
and hardship, but he had become accustomed to 
it. Laws hampered him on every side: church 
laws in jDrofusion, laws of state, royal game 
laws, taxes, tithes and rentals. It is difficult to 



Souls of the Infinite 109 




Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans upon his hoe 



110 Souls of the Infinite 

understand how he maintained his steadfast 
loyalty. Nor was he the only Thomas Wat- 
kins in the kingdom. There were thousands of 
others just like him, even more so — men who 
fought and gave their lives for their king after 
he had proven himself a more ruthless tyrant 
than James I. 

To the soul of Thaddeus, with its memories 
and its love of freedom, this was an abominable 
existence. These oppressive laws were unbear- 
able. It could read their unjust aim and ob- 
ject, could see the vicious purpose that begot 
them. Laws which embodied no moral obliga- 
tion, the which, rather, was a human crime to 
observe. But it seemed unable to interpret 
these things to Watkins. Long obedience and 
religion had Thomas Watkins subdued. Pos- 
sibly, too, the soul may not have been putting 
forth all the resolute persistence it had once 
been capable of — continued suppression will 
have its effect, even upon a soul. 

The burden of man was heavy here in Brit- 
ain, but it was not a comparison to the condi- 
tion that existed on the continent of Europe. 
The soul saw there the toiling millions without 
a vestige of liberty left. The iron rulers had 
robbed the struggling masses of every human 



I 



Souls of the Infinite HI 

right, had sunk them into ignorance, poverty 
and degradation. 

And now this striving, exhausted body of the 
human race had grasped rehgion, that Chris- 
tian cult, and it had spread among them like an 
epidemic of madness. 

For all the occult things of nature, which 
had puzzled man since first he began to think, 
they found in it an answer. All the supersti- 
tious fears, brood of ignorance, which had 
haunted him through his savage days, it solved 
for them. All their hope of salvation, their 
chance of future reward and possibility to 
escape eternal damnation, was in it explained. 
They accepted it bodily without inspection, as 
positive truth, conclusive, without doubt, and 
clung to it with the tenacity of desperation. 

It penetrated their minds, occupied by little 
rival learning, like the roots of a canker, and 
poisoned them one against the other. 

Every man's hand was against his neighbor 
of opposite faith. The divine teaching of love 
and charity was all obscured in the "Thou 
shalts" and the "Thou shalt nots." There was 
absolutely no toleration and no quarter. They 
turned, in their down-trodden condition, to 
smiting one another. The miserable state into 



112 Souls of the Infinite 

Avhich their rulers had sunk them was multi- 
plied a hundredfold. 

Champions of despotism, like Louis XIV of 
France and Charles V of Spain, shifted these 
masses of fanaticism and ignorance from one 
part of Europe to the other, wiping out resist- 
ance, intending to break the spirit of all, so 
completely that they never again could rise in 
opposition to despotic sway. 

If civil dungeons had grown dark and high 
in England, they were of colossal blackness on 
the Continent. Men, women and children in 
thousands crowded their moldy darkness. Tens 
of thousands perished on scaffold and on 
fagot pile. Such a deplorable condition of hu- 
man wretchedness the soul had not yet wit- 
nessed in all its travel. 

Why should it be? These were signs of 
dawn; but why necessary such a harsh and 
cruel awakening? Could not the course of hu- 
man events unfold less barbarously? Could 
not mankind adopt these new conditions with- 
out all this agony and sacrifice? What was at 
fault? Not all of it was due to Hebrew teach- 
ing, though much can be laid with justice there. 
This Bible taught too many things besides love 
and charity. And coming as it had when hu- 



Souls of the Infinite 113 

manity was so distraught, they had not the 
mental strength to separate good from bad, but 
assimilated all, and that which was corrupt out- 
weighed the little that was good. 

On society its influence was banefully detri- 
mental. All the lofty ideas and learning which 
had come from Greece and Alexandria, all the 
experiences of the human race, all the obvious 
facts of life, were set at naught before the dog- 
matic statements of this Book. Its teaching 
paralyzed social co-operation, disjointed the in- 
terests of people. Its fierce idealism stamped 
human effort but weakness, human virtues but 
sin, human reason but folly. 

Its effect upon the character of the individ- 
ual was equally as bad. No cannibal ever 
cooked a captive with one-half the savage zeal 
that Catholic, Calvinist, or Puritan burned 
rival converts. Human feeling and jDity fell 
before the stern injunctions of this Holy Book, 
and the squire or parish father, who would have 
shrunk from conscious cruelty, looked ruthless- 
ly on as the torturers ran the needles into the 
witch's flesh, swam her in the witch's pool, or 
hurried her to the witch's stake. 

Thus the soul survej^ed the struggle of his 
fellow-souls. Thomas Watkins saw mainly 



114! Souls of the Infinite 

England, and but only part of that. Upon 
the coronation of Charles I, times grew still 
more troubled there. These odious, unnatural 
laws began to prick more keenly on every side. 
His steadfast loyalty began to waver. 

He heard many rumors in town and tavern 
about the new world in the West, where were 
peace, freedom and security. The hills of 
Devon and the meadow-lands of Kent began 
to lose their attractiveness, began to have a 
rigid look, their beauty blighted by the inhu- 
manness of man. His parish home began to 
seem but a poor abiding place. The parson 
preached, "Man that is born of woman is but 
of few days and full of trouble." Watkins and 
his fellow-parishioners listened in assent. How 
foolish, thought the soul. Man, the most fa- 
vored being in all the world, whose domains 
reach from East to West; who is not barred 
from any place or clime, the whole earth for 
his heritage — ^her peaceful valleys and sweet 
pasture lands are his ; who read the meaning of 
her smiling spring and knew the beauty of her 
breaking wave ; beneath whose hand the desert 
blossomed like the rose, and nature opened 
wide her store of plenty — yet he would make 
himself most miserable of all. 



Souls of the Infinite 115 

Each day saw Watkins less content. Crowd- 
ed England was a land of exile. The soul was 
pining for the West ; now that there was a new 
land of the dipping sun, it could not stay. The 
westward-rolling wave had always borne it, 
a nameless something bound it in its sway. 
And Thomas began to share the yearning of 
this prisoner within his bosom; began to sus- 
pect that all these exactions, all these demands 
made by the zealous apostles of conservatism, 
were not wholly right; began to vaguely see 
that these champions of established customs, 
these advocates of stability in existing things, 
these scrupulous exactors of customary forms, 
were the ones who profited most by such exist- 
ing conditions. He began to suspect that if 
this abused under-fabric of society could move 
out, these disdainful nobles might be left sit- 
ting upon empty titles. Yes, he faintly began 
to perceive that it required common soldiers 
(toilers) to sustain and keep from emptiness 
the titles of these captain nobles. It slowly 
dawned upon him that a background of sable 
hue was positively necessary to make these 
lighter spots to shine, that it positively re- 
quired an extreme of wretchedness and pov- 



116 Souls of the Infinite 

erty to furnish and display an extreme of in- 
dolence and ease. 

Possibly not as precisely as this he saw, — but 
he saw too much for his "clod-pated" devout- 
ness. He could not longer endure the murky 
background, and, besides, there was this calling 
from the West. So Thomas Watkins left 
the Hampshire fallows, the way of fortune 
through an unplowed fell to follow. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Little time has passed since last we parted, 
possibly two-hundred-odd years or so, but 
progress has been rapid, and since time is but 
the measure of activity, it is very distant from 
this picture in the New World — already old. 

Out in southern Oregon, tucked away among 
her hills of pine and cedar, is the little town of 
Woodville, a nosey little town of some two 
hundred houses, sitting beside Willow River, a 
tributary of the Mohawk. Here was raised an 
American boy. We emphasize American to 
show that he is a descendant from no one racial 
family, but could enumerate among his ances- 
tors Englishmen, Frenchmen, Danes, Ger- 
mans, Romans, Greeks, and more yet, if you 
would go back far enough. 

His name was Henry, but his mother called 
him Hen ; so did nearly everybody else, except- 
ing — ^well, excepting somebody, we will not 

say who, but she always said "Henry," be- 
ll? 



118 Souls of the Infinite 

cause she thought Hen sounded like a chicken. 
Her father's name was Hall, and he ran the 
grocery store. Hen, however, did not mind 
the name a bit ; that is to say, ordinarily he did 
not mind it, but on special days and Sundays, 
when he was wearing his good clothes, he liked 
to be called Henry, or Henrj^ Oliver. His sec- 
ond name was Oliver. 

He was five years old, and had just two be- 
setting sins: he was always trying to evade 
disagreeable duties, and he had a general dis- 
like and disapproval of rules or restrictions of 
any kind. Of course, he had a lot of other 
minor faults — that was mostly what he was 
made up of. 

For one thing, he was always playing about 
the river. Time and time again his mother had 
cautioned him about it. 

"Some day, Henry" (she always called him 
Henry when she was lecturing him), "if you 
don't mind about that river you will fall in, and 
then I guess you will be either drowned — or 
willing to keep away." 

Henry listened very respectfully. He always 
listened to his mother, but that seemed about 
all there was to it. And one day, sure enough, 
he did fall in, but that was not till he was six. 



4 



Souls of the Infinite 119 

and he was pretty strong then. He caught 
hold of the end of a boat, and, though his 
mother screamed and clasped her hands to her 
breast, he got out all right. He never would 
have fallen in, so he said, if she hadn't come 
around and scared him just as he was looking 
over. 

Well, it didn't cure him of the habit at all; if 
anything, it made him worse. It was on Sat- 
urday when he fell in — Saturday always was 
his worst day; his mother often said she just 
wished there was school every day in the week 
— and by Monday morning every child in the 
Woodville school knew about Hen Williams 
falling into the river. 

He derived quite a deal of prominence from 
it — the first bit of prominence he had ever at- 
tained — but he was not trying much for promi- 
nence. He was just living, truly and thor- 
oughly living down to the very tip of his toes, 
and when he would draw his lungs full of that 
Oregon air, and the smell of pine-trees would 
be in his nose, I tell you it was good — ^you 
could just see it. 

His teacher somehow did not like him very 
well, either, but that was not Hen's fault. She 
was twenty-eight and unmarried, and women 



120 Souls of the Infinite 

are supposed to be rather ill-natured at that 
age. She probably could not help it. Hen 
never made any more noise in school than he 
could possibly help, and he always had his les- 
son; that is, he always had as much of it as he 
could get by packing the book about, and by 
his mother reading to him while he was un- 
dressing in the evening and while he was eating 
his breakfast in the morning. Which things 
ought certainly to be sufficient to satisfy any 
fair-minded teacher. 

In the summer there was no school at Wood- 
ville; then it was that it took nearly all of Mrs. 
Williams' time to watch Hen. He was the 
only child, and she often remarked that it was 
a blessing, because she believed that if she had 
one more she would be in the insane asylum. 

Hen, however, was not what would be called 
a wilfully bad boy; he never played mean tricks 
or did intentionally bad things; it was just sim- 
ply that he had to keep a-moving. And if 
Mrs. WilKams had often to look for him, she 
always knew where to look, — which in itself was 
some consolation. He was either back of 
Hall's grocery store, or over in Galegar's 
lot — they had a pigeon loft there — or else 
playing in the Woodville street, the whole 



Souls of the Infinite 



121 




Ben 



122 Souls of the Infinite 

length of which she could see from her door- 
way; or there was one other place where he 
went, and this was the place which worried her 
most, but he seldom played there of late, be- 
cause he could get no one to accompany him, 
all the neighbors' children having been forbid- 
den to go. Still, if the afternoon were warm 
and she suspected him to be tired of play, Mrs. 
Williams would always take a chance look by 
the river, and there she often found him 
stretched out on the grassy bank, asleep. 

He always got woke up with a paddling, 
too ; not very hard ones, however, because Mrs. 
Williams hated to punish Hen, and Hen knew 
it, and, in spite of his oft-repeated offenses, 
there was no boy in Woodville loved his mother 
as well as Hen Williams did. They would 
generally have one of their long walks and 
talks after one of these occurrences. Hen al- 
ways shared with his mother his every boyish 
thought, and Mrs. Williams, appreciating to 
its fullest extent that close intimacy which ex- 
isted between her and her boy, would fondly 
beam upon her disobedient little son. 

But once or twice of late she had found him, 
not asleep, but just lying there, looking out 
into the river. 



Souls of the Infinite 123 

"What are you doing, Hen?" she would say. 

"Nuthun, Dearest," (Dearest was the name 
she had taught this boy to say, and she loved 
to hear him say it.) 

And he wasn't, just kicking his toes into the 
dirt and looking. But the soul of him was, for 
here we find the wandering soul that we have 
watched for eight thousand years. 

There was a something in this blue-eyed boy 
that had roamed the wilds of Asia, eight thou- 
sands years ago. A definite something. There 
is in you. There is in me. The mere fact that 
we are here is positive proof. You are the di- 
rect material continuation of a vine which has 
trailed its tendrils all down the countless ages 
since man first began. In your case the chain 
has never been broken, the flame has never gone 
out ; if it had, you would not be here. 

Well, Hen attended the Woodville school 
until he was fourteen, and, through the varied 
admonition of his various teachers, and the con- 
stant application of his mother, he was then 
ready for the academy at Millsburg. Of 
course, a little of the credit may have been due 
to him, since he had to learn the stuff, no mat- 
ter who helped him, and, too, he had been really 
studious for the last year. So his trunk was 



124« Souls of the Infinite 

packed and a thousand little things made 
ready. There were his new suit of clothes, and 
his clean linen all nicely starched, for he was 
to wear a white collar and a necktie now. 
There were warm flannel underwear, home- 
sewed, two pairs of shoes, woolen stockings, 
bedroom slippers, towels and handkerchiefs — 
a whole trunk packed just as full as it could 
possibly be squeezed together — besides a lot of 
other things which had to be put in a hand- 
satchel. There was some toilet soap, a hair- 
brush, a scarf for his neck, a small pair of scis- 
sors and a nail-file, a spool of thread, and some 
extra buttons. Mrs. Williams had been pre- 
paring for it all summer. 

The Millsburg school was a boarding school. 
It was 110 miles from Woodville, ten miles by 
stage and one hundred miles by the railroad, 
and the school kept from September to June. 

Hennie had never been away from home be- 
fore, and it was the hardest thing for Mrs. 
Williams to reconcile herself to it. Here was 
her boy, her only boy, whose youthful inclina- 
tions she had shaped and watched so carefully 
for fourteen years, whose open mind she read 
like a printed page, and found nothing there 
save what she had planted and tended. He 



Souls of the Infinite, 125 

was going to leave her. Others would watch 
and tend this pliant, boyish mind, which she 
had striven to keep pure and noble, which was 
so dear to her. Would they be as careful? 
What all would be planted there? Would he 
be the same when he returned? She felt he 
wouldn't; Hennie could not always be just her 
boy; but it was awfully hard to feel the first 
cutting of those tender ties. To feel that this 
little boyish shoot of future manhood, which 
she had fashioned, was going out to meet the 
world, the great, heartless world, to be tried by 
its relentless methods! Would it be strong? 
Would it be good and true? Or might it be 
broken in pieces and go down? Who could tell 
her? Who could give her mother's heart assur- 
ance? 

When Hennie kissed her at the station and 
said, "Now, Dearest, don't you cry," and put 
his arms around her neck, — but she was already 
crying, and there were other tears besides her 
own, although he strove to hide it, that dried 
on Hennie's mother's cheek, that day the stage 
left Woodville. 

Millsburg was a county seat. It had quite a 
business center, with rows of office buildings, 
and spread its residential skirts in irregular 



126 Souls of the Infinite 

ruffles round about. Just on the eastern edge, 
occupying a wooded campus, was the acad- 
emy, adorned on the one side by an imposing 
ladies' hall for the girls, and unadorned on the 
other by a ramshackle wooden building, almost 
pushed off the lot, for the boys. Here arrived 
the nucleus of a load of mother's anxiety — Hen 
Williams. 

But much of her forebodings were unfound- 
ed ; she had built better than she knew ; and as 
soon as the timidity of new surroundings had 
worn off, Hen Williams began to show the ef- 
fects of that training — a training which made 
for strong individuality and for personal re- 
sponsibility. 

Hen looked the buildings over as soon as his 
time would permit, subconsciously comparing 
them with other things he knew. He also gave 
the campus quite an ample inspection. Ad- 
joining the town side of it stood the Millsburg 
court-house, a large stone building with the 
blindfolded Goddess of Justice standing over 
the main entrance. The naked sword, in her 
right hand, looked very heavy and strong, but 
the balances, which she poised in her left, had 
become broken. Hen remarked that it was 
probably the effect of the wind, but to the soul 



Souls of the Infinite 127 

of Thaddeus within him the picture appeared 
quite symbolical. 

The school took Hen in hand, or, rather, 
Hen took the school in hand, for his last year 
at Woodville proved to be only a sample of 
what he could do with schools. Before the first 
semester was over he had this academy all sized 
up, catalogued and relegated to its proper cor- 
ner in the sphere of his activities. His mind 
was expanding by leaps and bounds; that 
soul, which we have known before, was crowd- 
ing again. Here, also, evinced itself the per- 
sistent application which was in his nature, a 
transitional gift from his mother. 

One thing, howxver, served to hinder him 
somewhat, and that was his disregard for estab- 
lished customs and for laws ; especially laws for 
which he could see no reason. This often 
bumped him up against very hard things. But 
bumps did not stop him; they only served in 
some cases to vary his direction a little. Where 
he derived this determinate dislike for laws his 
mother could never figure out. It sometimes 
even carried him to extremes. 

By the time his four academic years were 
finished and he was back in Woodville, we have 
quite a flourishing young man, nineteen years 



128 Souls of the Infinite 

old, with a good breadth of intellectual compre- 
hension. Nellie Hall was very proud of him. 
His mother still called him Hen, however, and, 
although he was much different, the change had 
been so gradual she had hardly noticed it. 
The new things which had developed had 
more than compensated for the things which 
had been lost. He was her Hennie just the 
same, and just as dear, and he listens just as 
respectfully if she lectures him — possibly, 
though, in a more patronizing attitude. Still, 
Mrs. Williams did not see it. 

The little town was just the same and just as 
nosey. The same old paths were by the river, 
and if only you could have lingered with the 
two that wander there again! If only you 
could have felt the depth of that mother's soul ! 
She had forgotten, that Time's uncaring hand 
was robbing her of her boy. She only saw the 
same flaxen-headed little youngster, and with 
the same beautiful mother's earnestness she 
counseled him. 

On this sunmier came the third event in 
Hen's career: he must go away to school 
again; and this time he was going much far- 
ther away, for he had great ambitions. Mrs. 
Williams, however, did not grieve so, because 




The same old paths were by the river 



Souls of the Infinite 129 

she felt more confident in her son, and then, 
too, she had become somewhat accustomed to 
the substitution of "letters from Henry." Still, 
she felt it real hard, because San Francisco was 
a long way off, and he would not be able to 
come home for his vacations. But she wanted 
her Hen to be a great man; so it had to be. 
Four years would soon slip by. 

When Henry Williams took up his residence 
in San Francisco, San Francisco did not know 
it. Ngbody knew it, save possibly the old 
woman from whom he rented the stuffy little 
room on Mission Street — himself and some- 
body away up north among the hills of Oregon. 
To these latter it was quite an important event ; 
to the old woman on Mission Street it only 
amounted to two dollars a week. Of course, 
she was very anxious to help a young man 
through school. She would help a young man, 
or an old man, through school or through any- 
thing else, if they would pay her just two dol- 
lars a week for her dirty rooms. 

She had a very red nose, and Hen observed 
that she was more superfluous with her encour- 
agements when her nose was the reddest, and 
quite grouchy when it was not so red. She told 
him of some "byes" who used to room with her 



130 Souls of the Infinite 

who always called her mother. Hen said yes, 
but it didn't bring to his mind any suggestion 
of Dearest, not the faintest. It only made 
him think of a beer-bucket. 

Our village boy — just turning twenty, full 
of future hopes — was here in San Francisco, 
that great western metropolis with its four hun- 
dred thousand souls. As he walked down her 
crowded streets he was thinking, but he could 
turn over nothing in his brain to compare, to 
accurately measure this by, for he had never 
seen its like before. He did not feel lost, how- 
ever; rather he felt quite at ease, intuitively a 
part of it. The exterior was new to his senses ; 
but underneath his mind's surface, as it were, 
there seemed to be a pulse-beat in harmony 
with the hidden soul of this throbbing city. He 
stopped at the corner where Kearney came into 
Market; the tall stone buildings, rearing aloft 
their rugged shapes on either side, shadowed in 
his mind a canyon picture. Yes, a real canyon, 
and there was a stream flowing through it — a 
turbulent, struggling stream, uniting with 
other turbulent, struggling streams, and flow- 
ing on and on. Where was it flowing? 
Whither was it hastening? 

The soul had looked upon that self-same 



Souls of the Infinite 131 

stream many thousand times before, that 
stream of humanity. It had drifted with it, 
from the shores of the Pacific, ages ago, when 
it was dark and muddy. It had whirled and 
eddied, in seething torrents and in murmuring 
rivulets, until now it was splashing the shores 
of the Pacific again. The stream was always 
flowing on ; still, it was always here and always 
the self-same stream, whether in Nineveh or 
San Francisco. 

The school did not commence for two months 
yet, so Hen got himself a position as clerk in a 
hotel. He was going to help himself a little, 
for although Dearest's letters always brought 
something besides love and courage, still his 
father, to put it mildly, had never been much 
of a success, and this schooling in San Fran- 
cisco was expensive. 

The first morning he came down to work, the 
proprietor, old Mr. Oversight, introduced him 
to his duties, also to a young woman at the desk, 
Grace Winters, who was to help him. The 
hotel was the St. Valentine, a very nice-appear- 
ing place, though possibly not the most moral, 
if measured by the standard of this place and 
time. Modern morals, you understand, have 
been made to cover a great man;;^ customs. 



132 Souls of the Infinite 

which, in truth, have nothing to do with ethics 
of right and wrong. It would be more accu- 
rate to say the St. Valentine was a very moral 
place, but not in keeping with certain customs 
of the day. This, however, did not worry 
Hen; he was not down there to designate the 
customs of San Francisco. 

Grace proved to be a very sociable girl. Be- 
fore the first week was past, she had asked him 
every possible question about Oregon, Wood- 
ville, the academy at Millsburg, even down to 
his present room on Mission Street, and Hen 
was just about as willing to tell her, because he 
had seen few people to talk to here in San 
Francisco, and was a bit lonesome. She also 
told him that she had come from Tennessee, 
and that she had been in that office a year. 

Hen Williams fell into the particular of the 
St. Valentine, and into the general of San 
Francisco, like a rain-drop into the sea. It was 
not that he was peculiarly adapted for these 
things, but more the absence of any peculiarity. 
He was a very average fellow, and the city 
meets the average best. The city, also, with 
her average crowding average, serves to bring 
out that which is strongest in a man, and this is 
what it began to do with Hen. 



Souls of the Infinite 133 

He had considerable time here to read, and 
such an exhaustive public library from which 
to borrow books; so read he did every minute 
that he could spare, sometimes hardly taking 
time to sleep. There had been one ambition in 
his life, a university education, which he had 
been compelled to forego; so he was going to 
compensate for it, as far as possible, by read- 
ing. He had Henry George, or John Stuart 
Mill, or somebody else, always sticking under 
the counter, and an abridged, chronological en- 
cyclopedia glued to his hip-pocket. 

*'Henry Williams," said Grace one after- 
noon, "will you take your nose out of that book 
for a minute and let us talk a bit, now that it is 
quiet? I tell you that you will get positively 
dippy if you don't quit that." 

Grace was young and a little romantic, and 
she always wanted to talk. 

"Are you still slumming over there on Mis- 
sion Street? I honestly can't see how you 
stand that place. Have you got to calling the 
old woman 'Mother' yet?" 

"Well, didn't I say I was going to move? — 
only I can't seem to find the time to look for 
another place, and besides, I hardly know 
where to look." 



134 Souls of the Infinite 

"Well, I can tell you where, and have said 
so for the past five weeks, if you would just 
retain consciousness long enough to listen. I 
know this 'Frisco town as well as I know the 
St. Valentine. On Eddy Street, the room I 
have — May Sutton and I took it together — we 
pay just six dollars between us, and it is a 
dandy room, with a big bay window and hot 
and cold water; but May is going back to her 
husband, so I guess I will have to give it up; 
but Rose Ramsay tells me there is just a splen- 
did place over on Bush Street, so I am going 
over to see it." 

*'Well, when you are over there, suppose 
you look around for me." And Hen's nose 
went back into the book. Grace blotted a name 
or two in the register and looked out the win- 
dow. That seemed satisfactory to her, if you 
would judge from the way she looked. 

Grace Winters was a real good, sociable fel- 
low, and while she perhaps never thought so 
deeply about things, city life, and her own 
welfare, had taught her to inspect the surface 
very carefully. And as the surface is all we 
ever come in contact with, she probably did 
just as well as folks who try to go deeper. She 
looked quite young, possibly nineteen or so. 



Souls of the Infinite 135 

But girls' ages are very uncertain things. Hen 
never even chanced a speculation at them; he 
had other things to do. She had been married 
once, but that might have happened had she 
been only sixteen. The soul of Thaddeus liked 
her right well. She was honest ; not so much in 
what she said, but in what she did. Her ac- 
tions were honest actions, and her heart was 
good; and that combination alone was always 
safe, for "place or show, if not for a nose." 
She did her share to the running of San Fran- 
cisco, and was cheerful about it. She paid her 
own board-bill, and had to ask no one's per- 
mission to walk down the street. With six 
days for business and a Sunday at the beach 
or in the parks, she seemed to be taking about 
all the comforts ordained for mortals under the 
then existing city government. 

To the soul this appeared to be the more 
proper place for woman — by the side of man, 
sharing his toil, his worries, and his pleasures ; 
neither beneath him nor above him, but a hu- 
man being like himself. It had seen her first 
his drudging slave, because she was weaker 
physically. It had seen her kept hidden and 
secluded like so much plunder to be enjoyed 
as occasion suited by the possessor. It had 



130 Souls of the Infinite 

seen her housed up and cherished like a deli- 
cate plant, or like a superhuman thing, not to 
be contaminated by the vulgar world of men. 
But in all these places she had not developed, 
but had been just what the compulsory condi- 
tions considered her. 

Why was she different from man? She was 
made from the same clay, the same blood ran 
through her veins, she had the same likes and 
dislikes, was moved by the same emotions, and 
under equal opportunity would be his equal. 
Why, then, make her different by the imposi- 
tion of different conditions? Why have one- 
half of the human race to own the other half? 
The one to place his name upon the other, to 
own it and to be a law unto it, and it to be a 
burden unto him ? Conditions can make a beg- 
gar or a prince. Why, then, these unnatural 
and difficult things maintain? Why not stand 
her by his side, his yoke-fellow, with an even 
yoke? 

But man is blind, and customs of the stupid 
past are bands of iron. He has, from his mag- 
nanimity, granted her many of the privileges 
which the Almighty scattered here for all. But 
still he needs must domineer her, must confine 
her, must pass upon her outgoings and her in- 



Souls of the Infinite 137 

comings, must chastise her if she wears his 
clothes or if she wears not enough to suit him, 
must exclude her from certain fields or stamp 
her an impostor if she strives to enter; in a 
word, he has not yet recognized that she is the 
other half, the equal, a free moral agent like 
himself, to whom it is not given him to grant, 
or to withhold, but who stands even as he be- 
fore their common Maker. 

By the time his two months were up and 
school was ready. Hen had become thoroughly 
familiar with operating the St. Valentine, also 
quite well acquainted with a great many other 
things incidental to hotel life in a big city. Old 
Mr. Oversight appreciated his efficiency much, 
and offered him evening hours, at a small wage, 
so as to keep him there. Grace Winters more 
than liked him; you could tell it by the way she 
fussed around when no one was in the office. 
She had found him a room on Bush Street; how 
close it was to her own Hen never said. But 
they always came down the street for their 
breakfast together, and oftentimes you might 
have heard Grace scolding a little, in an under- 
tone, about him staying so late at the library. 
"Hennie Williams," she would say, "you 
might just as well be running around town till 



138 Souls of the Infinite 

twelve o'clock at night. I don't know, for sure, 
if you are at the library." 

But of course she did, and she knew that he 
was reading there, and she knew that if ever 
they had an afternoon to go to the park, or 
anywhere else, she had the awf uUest time — she 
just had to search him to see that he didn't have 
one of those musty old books sticking about 
him somewhere. 

By the time three winters had rolled around 
and Hen was finishing his junior year, he was 
as poor as a crow. He was wearing glasses, 
too ; not that his eyes were so very bad, but that 
one of the doctors had advised it as a precau- 
tionary measure. He had been in school 
twenty-seven months and read library books 
three hundred and sixty-five days out of each 
year. He was beginning now to think he could 
see the end. He was beginning to have day- 
dreams of an office in Millsburg and Dearest 
and himself comfortably arranged. Just one 
more year, he had told her in his letter. 

He had left the St. Valentine now and was 
doing some assistant work in the City Health 
Department. Grace Winters was also clerk- 
ing in the Health Department. 

This was the spring that San Francisco and 



Souls of the Infinite 189 

the nation were torn with the throes of such 
a heated political struggle. Hen and Ned 
Wayfield, a classmate and chum of his, did 
lieutenant work for the Boss over on the South 
Side. There was where the 'Frisco struggle 
centered. There the soul of Thaddeus watched 
the same old system of oppression framed up; 
the same old equipment for fraudulent ex- 
ploitation prepared ; the same old propaganda, 
though maneuvered with different tactics, 
which it had watched since first the history of 
people began ; the same thing which champions 
of despotism had used to maintain their tyr- 
rany in Europe ; the same thing which the an- 
cient Roman nobles had used to defeat the good 
of Italy; the same thing which Xerxes had 
manipulated upon the banks of the Hellespont 
— the control and perversion for private gain 
of the latent power in the ignorant masses. 
And this was not only so in San Francisco; 
every soul which had the ability to see, saw it 
throughout the nation — yes, throughout the 
world. Wherever there was ignorance suffi- 
cient for a movement, unscrupulous hands 
were using it. 

Hen's senior year was his hardest year of 
all; but the encouragements were likewise the 



140 Souls of the Infinite 

greatest, so he kept to it. He had had an abun- 
dance of reserve energy when he landed in San 
Francisco, but now the supply was beginning 
to get low. Grace said she thought he was try- 
ing to read every book in the San Francisco 
Public Library. What he was trying to do 
was to finish his course of reading before he got 
out where there were no such facilities. 

As spring came on, it found him weary of 
the struggle. He was longing for the end. 
His ambition seemed to be slipping its hold. 
Dearest was sick at home, but she said in her 
letters that she would be better soon, and for 
him not to come, but to stay and finish. But 
Dearest's letters were not written by herself; 
she was too ill ; and so they brought no courage 
with them. He was troubled. Things upset 
him. He did not seem to have his old-time 
grip. 

He had been for more than four years in San 
Francisco, and he had passed the time by min- 
utes. He had read with diligence, everything, 
from Homer and Pythagoras to Hume and 
Huxley. 

At graduation time he took the ex's all and 
passed. He was twenty- four now, and, besides 
his profession, had dug out a liberal education 



Souls of the Infinite 141 

that put him not behind, in mental grasp, a 
man from Yale or Harvard. 

The June commencements came on and fin- 
ished. Hen Williams stepped out graduated, 
but a different man. For four days he had 
been a different man. His diploma was in his 
pocket; but something else was also in his 
pocket — a letter with an ebon border. Dearest 
was dead. 

Ned Wayfield came past him on the steps 
and shook his hand. "Well, old man, I sup- 
pose you are going home." 

But was he? Where was home? He wasn't 
going anywhere. 

He walked slowly down to the city office, 
climbed up on a stool in the private laboratory, 
and there he sat. The clock upon the shelf 
ticked slowly off the seconds. What was the 
use of things? Where was he going? He did 
not care. There was not a single tie, nor one 
attraction, that drew him anywhere. 

The summer twilight began to settle round, 
but still he sat. He was so wholly aimless, so 
disconsolate, the soul within his bosom began 
to murmur. 

"Well," Henry said, "since, then, you are 
my soul, you of the many fortunes, perhaps 



142 Souh of the Infinite 

that you can tell. Perhaps that you can an- 
swer why I feel this awful vanib^', this complete 
discouragement, as one awakening "svithout a 
purpose here. Have I labored "^^Tong '■ Have I 
mistaken been and vauily cast with this one 
throw which hf e allots us here .- What seek I 
now? 

The soul said, "Xo ; you have but only partly 
lost. Remember this, however: There is no 
one essential tiling wliich, when attained, will 
happiness assure. 

"Life goes not thus, for I have traveled far, 
and many knots have seen miraveled by the 
road. 

*'Know this: That mortals all seek happi- 
ness, but seek it most bhndly, knowing not. 
Some in the distant future; some in delusions 
rare. But 'tis not afar, nor vonder. but at vour 
feet. 'Tis not in riches more abmidant, nor yet 
in knowledge at too great a cost, but in the 
days and in the minutes as they pass. 'Tis in 
the burning of the flame." 

'Ts happiness, then, all the object here 
below?" 

"Yes, for all mankind, 'tis all. The power 
above us may a different object have, but we 
know it not. nor shall we ever know it." 



Souls of the Infinite 14.3 

"The mind can never see itself, can never 
watch its coming in or going out. Nor can 
humanity itself behold its origin or ultimatum 
understand. Your mind or soul is but a part 
of an infinity; how, then, can it contain or com- 
prehend the whole?" 

"Another question: What, then, is happi- 
ness—this thing for which I blindly seek." 

"Happiness! The gratification of desire 
is happiness. In the action; in the knowl- 
edge of past, and in the prospects of future 
such." 

"Is ignorance, then, to be considered bhss, 
with only one desire, if it be satisfied? Who 
is the happy man?" 

"The happy man is he who has the greatest 
store of gratified desires. The greatest action, 
and the greatest hope in future; the least pro- 
portion of ungratified desires. But this com- 
prehendeth much. 

"Knowledge multiplies desires. Liberty and 
peace attain their satisfaction, peace of mind 
attends it, and no one stands alone. Base, low 
desires, when gratified, cripple the soul and 
render short its future hope. If wants are sat- 
isfied before desire is known, it brings not hap- 
piness; and if upon one desire you center all, 



144 Souls of the Infinite 

you starve the soul and to the primitive become 
akin. 

"If now you would the greatest good attain, 
your mission here on earth fulfill, go forth, but 
to these things attend. For this that I have 
told is not in idle jest, but is the deepest truth 
that man as yet can hold." 



CHAPTER IX 

After this Henry loafed around San Fran- 
cisco for two weeks. He could not get the idea 
into his head that he was not going anywhere. 
It was not that he was so completely crushed 
with sorrow, though he loved his mother dearly, 
as dearly as any boy could love a mother who 
had been everything which a mother could be, 
but he did not seem to be able to get a hold of 
things again, to readjust himself. Did you 
ever take a quick, unexpected journey of a day, 
and, awakening the next morning in some dis- 
tant hotel, have it take you a minute or so to 
understand yourself? Well, that is just the 
way Hen felt the whole time. His whole life 
had been unconsciously so fastened to this one 
hope — from his very first boyish brags — he was 
always going to be a big man and take care of 
Dearest. The idea that anything different 
might happen had never entered his head. If 
he had ever been earnestly in love with some 
girl, it might have been different ; but he hadn't. 

145 



146 Souls of the Infinite 

He had liked many, because he was a lovable 
fellow, but that was all. He had never taken 
girls, as girls, seriously. He had been extreme- 
ly ambitious, and Dearest's life and his life had 
flowed in such a harmony that he had never 
separated the two. 

Dearest had made their aim and object one. 
She was living only for her boy, and he had 
been making himself, because of Dearest. 

Now everything appeared different to him. 
He thought his whole existence over and over 
and over again, until at last he decided that life 
was one big, uncertain joke; not a serious, re- 
liable thing in it. He could not see what peo- 
ple ever tried to do anything for. 

So this was his frame of mind at the end of 
two weeks when he took a position in the office 
of "Harding & Hassett." He was spending 
days in job lots, just passing them off; Satur- 
day or Monday was immaterial. 

"Harding & Hassett" had the head office of 
a big life insurance company in San Francisco. 
Mr. Hassett, the junior member of the firm, 
who had come from New York, was a "frenzied 
financier," who was all for business from morn- 
ing till night. Hen often felt as if he would 
like to give him a poke in the mental ribs and 




Mrs. Ilassett 



Souls of the Infinite 147 

say, "Wake up! What is it you are striving 
always so hard for — something real? Bosh! 
man, there is nothing to it." Of course, he 
was making money, but what of that? 

Hen was with them five months, till the fall; 
then Hassett took his family and one other 
man besides Henry and moved to their head 
office at Washington, D. C. The national leg- 
islature was convening and he wanted to oper- 
ate things on the ground. 

His family consisted simply of his wife, Mrs. 
Hassett. She was quite different from him — 
one of those sociable little bodies, who liked 
everybody and everything; who only used 
money to buy things with, and who always 
wanted to be having a good time, if possible. 
She never took anything very seriously, if she 
could help it; not that she had reasoned 
life out at all, but simply because she did not 
want to. 

Hassett was very jealous of her. His was 
that kind of a nature. The mere fact that he 
did not know what she was doing at any given 
time suggested to his mind the idea that she 
must be doing wrong. He was too busy him- 
self to spend time with her and he hated to have 
anybody else to. He was jealous of men, of 



148 Souls of the Infinite 

course; and he was jealous of women — they 
might take her off where there were men. 

For some unaccountable reason — possibly 
because he had seen, as we have said, that Hen 
never took women seriously — he kept, in a 
sort of unapprobatory, temporary, expedient 
way, leaving her with him. We are sure it was 
not because he had implicit confidence in Hen, 
but more probably because he could think of 
nothing better to do. He possibly felt a little 
easier at thinking he knew where she was. If he 
had to go out of town, he would have Henry 
take her to dinner. If he were busy on a 
Sunday, he would allow her to drive to the park 
with Mr. Williams. 

Time and time again, Hen sort of found her 
on his hands. She often remarked about it in 
her joking way. Some women would have let 
it woriy them into the blues, but she was just 
making the best she could out of conditions she 
seemed to be unable to help. And Hen — well, 
we would not say that Hen tried to get away 
from her, because such a thing as that was not 
in his code of ethics, and, besides, he had quite 
easily slipped from toleration to something — 
well, to something a little more friendly than 
that. But we will say that, regardless of the 



Souls of the Infinite 149 

seemingly unavoidable circumstances, his con- 
science, which, at best, was very dormant on 
matters of this kind, did, on some occasions, 
prick him a little. 

Henry stayed with the Washington office 
for four years; though not connected with the 
political end of the company, he observed in a 
casual way the exterior of the machinery of 
government. What the soul saw made it al- 
most believe itself back in the bosom of Mil- 
tias. The same dual system was at work. The 
same deceitful legislation was being enacted. 
The same iniquitous concurring and conniving 
of lawmakers, defeating of the common good, 
sacrificing of public interest, — the same greedy 
secret perfidy which it had seen beneath those 
ancient Roman togas. And what was even 
worse than the lawmaking was the corrupt 
judging of the law. Of all the prostituting of 
justice, praeparo decisions with gold for evi- 
dence, fraudulent injunctions and polluted 
truth that was spued out of those sacred tem- 
ples of justice. It would be sacrilegious to 
call them temples, save for the fact that the 
sanctity of the courts must be maintained in 
the eyes of the people. "An aristocracy of the 
robe" describes the condition not at all. The 



150 Souls of the Infinite 

Star Chambers of Charles I were only partial 
examples, for they were openly avowed in their 
opposition to the people. 

The soul recognized plainly the condition. 
These rulers were having other interests than 
the interests of the nation, were getting away 
from the people. The two classes were form- 
ing again. 

But why were not these representatives 
taken to account? Did the enlightened twen- 
tieth-century people knowingly submit to such 
betrayal, such flagrant violation of oaths and 
obligations? Ah! there was the trouble. The 
people did not know. The great educator and 
enlightener of the people, the great check and 
safeguard of representative government, the 
public press, the thing on which they relied for 
information, was perjured, and belied the cause 
it purported to espouse, bewildered and con- 
fused the people, or buried irrefutable actuali- 
ties so deeply with statistics and hypothetical 
intricacies of statecraft, that it was like a grain 
of mustard seed lost in a bushel, or a miscar- 
riage of justice on a crowded calendar. 

Thus the soul saw the reins of government 
being gathered up ; thus the people being sad- 
dled and bridled again — taxes being levied, di- 



Souls of the Infinite 151 

rcct and indirect; laws being thrown out on 
every side like lines to a runaway, soon they 
would begin to tighten and to prick. 

Hen's observation, as we said, was super- 
ficial ; but the little which he did see made him 
still firmer in his belief that life was all a joke. 
If he had been one of the poor, struggling, 
starving taxpayers, with a family of eight or 
ten, who had to suffer by these unjust laws and 
decisions, perhaps it would not have appeared 
so jokey to him. Or maybe, perhaps, it would, 
and he would have only said that he had the 
butt end of the joke. Howsoever, he believed it 
was a joke, which had, on some occasions, to be 
taken a bit serious — for you see, he was twenty- 
eight or twenty-nine now and single. 

He began to speculate as to the veracity and 
rationality of this married state, with a settling 
down, which his friends talked about. But, to 
tell you the truth, he hadn't a valid reason in 
the world for wishing to enter it. 

He was enjoying himself immensely and had 
been for the past four years. Of course, he had 
no permanent abiding place — that might have 
been one thing; and the philosophy the soul 
had taught — that no man wholly died save he 
who died childless — might have been another. 



152 Souls of the Infinite 

He wanted to make sure of not letting the 
flame go out with him. Faint reasons, he ad- 
mitted; still, as we say, he was speculating 
about it. 

He hadn't laid by much of anything to set- 
tle down on. You see he hadn't been working 
much, mostl}^ loafing and holding down an easy 
job. So these speculations may have indi- 
rectly been a kind of recoil from his inactivity ; 
a sort of stretching of his formerly energetic 
nature. Because if he settled down, he would 
have to begin to hustle up. 

On this particular June morning he was 
standing by the office window, looking out at 
the figures on the sidewalk hurrying to and 
fro. He was philosophizing in a dreamy way : 
the thousand and one different motives anima- 
ting these different individuals, and how much 
alike were all — if some unseen hand could give 
the board half a turn without awaking the play- 
ers, each would go on following somebody 
else's purpose, none would know the difference. 
He was dreaming thus, not laboring with any 
thought — just thinking passive-like — just let- 
ting that innermost part of him, which was 
not wholly of him, spin itself along. 

A sort of mellowness was in his heart. He 



Souls of the Infini 153 

took it for a feeling kind to all mankind; but 
it was not wholly that. There was in it some- 
thing more, something akin to instinct — a 
something which generally comes in the spring- 
time of our early twenties. But at that time 
he had been chasing with all his might a 
phantom. 

Now let me give you an accurate picture of 
this last house of the soul of Thaddeus. The 
soul itself we trust you already know quite in- 
timately. You have seen it in its first wild 
state, or semi-wild — we did not try to begin at 
the very beginning, because that is such a dis- 
agreeable picture. Man in his primitive sav- 
age state was anything but pleasing. We often 
hear of the "free and noble savage," but it is 
a misnomer. The true primitive savage was 
neither free nor noble. Nature provided 
grudgingly for him. He had neither the 
strength of the bull nor the fleetness of the wild 
ass. He had not a furry coat like the humble 
denizens of the wood, nor was his food ready 
prepared for him like the feathered tribe. 
Thus, imperfectly protected, he roamed about, 
suffering from the heat by day and the cold by 
night, hunger and starvation always staring 
him in the face. He was always suspicious^ 



154? Souls of the Infinite 

always in danger, always on the watch, afraid 
of things seen and unseen. He depended on 
no one and no one could depend on him. He 
expected nothing from his neighbors and did 
unto them as he believed they would do unto 
him. Thus his life was one prolonged scene of 
selfishness and fear. 

But there was planted in him a quality which, 
in spite of his physical disadvantages, was to 
make him ruler of all. This quality, or essence, 
a self-inspiring something, having initiatory 
power, we have called the soul, but which ap- 
pears more to be a composite thing, made up 
of mental attributes and a subconscious influ- 
ence from experiences. It was this power in 
man which brought him out of the darkness, 
which exemplified the true grandeur and dig- 
nity of the animal, which broke the despotic 
sway of capricious nature — that power which 
for countless cycles of ages had ruled supreme 
over the earth. 

From its first wild state we have followed it 
through ancient Chaldea, into the desert of 
Arabia, into the one-sided Greek civilization, 
through the materialism of Rome, and then 
back into the morasses of western Europe. 
We have watched it through the second and 



Souls of the Infinite 155 

more full dawn, then down to the present time. 
We have seen things which at first were con- 
sidered superphysical or divine, prove to be 
perfectly natural ; and things which came in in 
a perfectly natural way, later given a sacred 
significance. We have seen the effects of brute 
domination, the tyranny of kings, the working 
of civic influences and the stimulus of personal 
liberty. We have seen the powerful hold of 
superstition, fastened by ignorance, and have 
watched the very tardy extrication — many ten- 
tacles still firmly fastened. We have seen hu- 
manity dwarfed by custom and stunted by un- 
natural laws. 

We have followed this trailing vine by tedi- 
ous travel torn, through all the winding path, 
and now we have to-day man, who is the com- 
pilation of all the experiences of the human 
race — the direct continuation of the soul which 
was before him — the most finely organized ma- 
terial of this terrestrial portion of the universe. 

Henry Williams' ambition had carried him 
a little above the average of mankind. He had 
received some very hard bumps, had done some 
very hard thinking, and was trying to profit by 
it. To-day as he walked home for his dinner, 
he was humming "Give my regards to Broad- 



150 Souls of the Infinite 

way." His mind was in a delicate balance — 
agate-like — with friction reduced to a mini- 
mum. Things which disturbed him, and he 
was unable to remedy, he tried to avoid ; things 
which pleased him, he tried to follow. He was 
leading a life which, while it had little of that 
keen enjoyment due to intense emotion, was 
filled with the greater amount of happiness. 
He was taking the peaceful sweetness out of 
the moments as they passed. And as the tiny 
ripples, which kiss the beach continually, total 
more than the crested waves which roll high, 
but only come anon, so was he trying. 

But too much quiet in youth accumulates an 
energy which is like fire-damp in an unused 
mine. He was following the soul's philosophy 
too implicitly. His balance was getting tippy. 

The following morning, as he came in to 
breakfast, the waitress seated him on the oppo- 
site side of the dining-room. He disliked being 
moved, but forgot it a second later and was 
looking over the morning paper. His break- 
fast tasted very good, and he had nearly fin- 
ished it, when he happened to glance over at his 
neighbors. It was a trifle peculiar — he glanced 
just in time to meet a glance, some one who 
was looking at him over the shoulder of an 



Souls of the Infinite 157 

elderly gentleman. He almost stared. The 
incident was quite a surprise on both sides, I 
am sure. 

How Henry happened to look up just at 
that instant was queer, for he was reading an 
interesting bit of news. 

The couple appeared to him to be a gentle- 
man and his daughter, traveling. Still they 
might have been boarding there a month and 
he not seen them from his regular seat. He 
wanted to get another look at the girl, but her 
head was just behind the old gentleman's and 
she would not turn it. He could see a very 
voluptuous mass of hair, but that was all. 

Now it is strange that such a trivial thing 
as this should affect the equilibrium of Henry. 
He might have done the same thing a thousand 
times before and never noticed it — but it did. 
He kept thinking all sorts of things as he 
walked down to the office. Yet he did not 
really know how she looked, nor was he certain 
he would recognize her again, unless he saw 
her in exactly the same place and company — 
her eyes were big, and he believed she had a 
dimple in her chin, but was not sure. Her hair 
was brown, kind of a silky brown ; he saw that, 
plain enough. 



1581 Souls of the Infinite. 

Things were quiet at the office that morning. 
Hen did little and started early home for 
luncheon, but his expectations were disappoint- 
ed. Somebody was not there. 

That evening at dinner-time he did not see 
her, but the dining-room was crowded — she 
might have been there. He ate demurely, 
listening more to the strains of music as they 
floated o'er the hall. The violin seemed crying, 
crying, and the harp in somber notes to meas- 
ure time, unheeding of its fellow's weeping 
tones. 

The next morning he came down to break- 
fast thinking. He scanned the faces; no one 
was there; and, though he glanced repeatedly 
at the doorway, no one came. So he considered 
it must be a closed incident; a ship that in the 
twilight darkness passed. He walked slowly 
down to work. He was in a pensive mood. He 
hummed a tune, but there was nothing about 
Broadway in it — it sounded more like "Dream- 
ing now of Hallie." 

Just as he turned into the building, who 
should step out of the elevator but this same 
girl. He knew her instantly; how or why he 
could not surely tell. 

Now Hen would not be rude enough to smile 



Souls of the Infinite 159 

intently at a lady whom he did not know, but 
he was just that pleased at seeing her that he 
almost did, before he caught himself. She no- 
ticed it, but did not recognize it — not by any 
sign that he could name, or anybody else could 
name. Her eyelids never moved, nor did her 
rosy mouth betray a line, but still he knew she 
knew. Something he felt — something which 
came from her eyes, but was not of her eyes. 
Now, do you believe that? Do you believe the 
eyes can give a sign without a move, or with- 
out a facial line to aid them? Well, they can, 
and if you travel long enough you'll find it so. 

Hen went up to the office; he was quite ex- 
cited. Still nothing out of the ordinary had 
happened. Nothing peculiar had transpired. 
A thousand people might pass him in the Cen- 
tral Building. A thousand people might stop 
a day at the modest hotel he called his home. 
Nothing peculiar, save that which had hap- 
pened in his mind, and there is where most all 
peculiar things do happen. 

The way he fussed around the office all that 
day was real astonishing, he was as flustrated 
as a probation pastor at a "ladies' aid." He 
wondered a thousand things. Wondered if he 
could have seen the face somewhere before and 



160 Souls of the Infinite 

if this was, then, but a caper of his memory. 
He scanned the hotel register at noon. He 
called the clerk to help him. But nothing 
could he find. 

For 'most a week, though oft he tried, he saw 
nor heard no more. Then came a party at the 
house. It was the "Seventh Annual Ball," 
and urban gayety was there. Hen had brought 
Mrs. Hassett, and though he strove to enter- 
tain and showed her every courtesy, still some 
instinct seemed to tell her he was ill at ease. It 
unsettled her. She hardly permitted him to 
leave her sight. 

The dance was crowded. Hen said he felt 
the heat, and so they walked amid the festoons 
of the open court. The heavy boughs were 
fragrant with the smell of pine. The Chinese 
lanterns cast a feeble glow. They passed a 
large palmetto, in a wooden vase, and there 
beneath its shadow some one sat alone. Hen 
saw her. He did not startle though, or stop 
the words he spoke, but in that instant passing 
there was mutual recognition unavowed — ^was 
meaning, more than words. 

Though deep, it was most silent and most 
subtle, this greeting, extremely quick, without 
an outward notice; but some one else was also 



Souls of the Infinite 161 

quick, alert, and almost quite as subtle — ^his 
companion — she saw it. She had, with covert 
worry, felt Hen's lately listless mood, and 
when now he thought to hurry her again into 
the dance, she would not go, but spoke in 
anger : 

"Henry Williams, I know that woman, and 
I saw you look. You need not lie to me. You 
have been crazy for these past ten days, and if 
you think that Kittie Hassett is simple enough 
to stand for this, you are mistaken." 

"But, Mrs. Hassett " Hen was excited. 

He was almost scared. He had never seen her 
playful eyes such flaming flashes hold. Be- 
sides, he needs must haste away; a moment 
more might be too late. 

"Don't 'but' to me ! I'm not a child, or play- 
thing to be duped by pleasant explanations, or 
to be dropped whene'er you have a mind. I 
will not stand it. If you imagine you can wipe 
the slate, of these four years, so easily — I tell 
you, I can break it!" 

"Now do be kind enough, my dear, to calm 
yourself, or folks will notice. You have the 
next dance out, I know, and I will come. 
Listen " 

"I will not listen. Nor will you come. 



162 Souls of the Infinite 

We'll both sit right down here, till every dance 
is out — or till morning, for that matter. Why, 
bless my soul! Do you imagine — why, mer- 
ciful goodness! That wicked woman yon- 
der " 

"Now, careful, Dear, you'll make a scene." 
"A scene! A scene out here, pray who's to 
see it? She? Yes, she. Well, she is nobody. 
She couldn't go into the ballroom. You know 
what I have said to you before, Henry Wil- 
liams. Now you are beginning it. Well, 
there's going to be trouble to-night. Yes — * 
there'll be trouble to-night, alright, — ^but we 
will wait till the party's over." 

"You and that woman — humph! But I sup- 
pose you know her well — ^have met her often. 
Puh! I've known all this week that there was 
something wrong with you; but I did not sus- 
picion this. No, I did not suspicion such a 
thing as this. I see now why you did not have 
the time to telephone. Oh! I'm a simple baby 
^ — I'm asleep." 

"Listen a minute. I do not know——" 

"No; of course, you do not know her. You 

do not know anybody, do you? You think, 

Hennie, because I have always been so quiet, 

because I am always joking, that I do not care 



Souls of the Infinite tl63 

—that I have no heart. Oh, no! Kittie does 
not care— she's only Kittie. But let me tell 
you this— Kittie does care, and Kittie is not an 
office girl or chambermaid, like poor Gracey 
Winters — to sit around and cry and hold her 
hands. What I say I'll do, I'll do. And we 
will attend to consequences afterwards. 

"Now Hsten, Henry. If you were in love 
with some nice single girl— to marry her— all 
right, I would not say a word, not if it killed 
me; but you shall not leave me for some other 
man's wife. Not while I am in my sober 
senses." 

Hen could not talk, so he listened. This 
state of affairs had changed his mind about 
"hastening away," so he pushed his arm around 
the back of the seat, and gradually the storm 
subsided. 

At first he had been too surprised to think. 
He had not expected this— or all of it— and 
now was glad enough to have the quiet, so said 

no more. 

They sat there through a few more dances, 
then went inside. Hen took her program 
round and explained that she was ill, then got 
her wraps, and took her home. 

The taxi, on that journey home, got various 



164 Souls of the Infinite 

orders. First, JMrs. Hassett said, "Drive to 
the depot." But when almost there, the driver 
got other orders, to turn and drive back up 
to Twentieth Street. Then later he was told 
again to drive to the depot. The trail of that 
cab was marking out the course of the argu- 
ment within. Finally, though, after much 
coaxing and a good deal of promising, plus 
numerous cry spells alternated with periods of 
reproachful silence, Henry took her home. 

As he drove back he was too unstrung to 
meditate ; still, things kept running through his 
mind: — So Kittie knew the girl — if only she 
had said her name. So she was married — then 
this old gentleman must be her husband. Kit- 
tie said she was very bad — ^how did she know? 
He reached for his handkerchief. Something 
caught the lining of his pocket. It was his ring 
— a solitaire Kittie had given him. Kind- 
hearted Kittie — she was a dear, sweet thing — 
he liked her. It was not her fault — nor was it 
his. It was unfortunate that such things must 
happen. Well, he would probably never see 
this girl again. At least, he would try not to 
see her. 

Next morning, as he came down to break- 
fast, his mind was still quite firm. He went 



Souls of the Infinite 165 

straight to his table, sat down and held the 
morning paper well above his face. He wanted 
very much to take a look ; but, no — 'twas better 
not. 

But his stoic self-restraint was wasted. As 
he got up to go, he took just one furtive glance 
about and saw the empty chairs. He drew a 
long, deep breath of relief ; but was it relief, or 
was it halfway disappointment? 

His morning at the office was taken up most- 
ly with hypotheticating, thinking, quite wor- 
ried; that "agate balance" of his was nowhere 
in evidence. 

As he went home that noon, he walked much 
like a person in just a trifle hurry. But the 
dining-room was empty, no one was there ; that 
is, no one for him. He was quite a little dis- 
appointed. 

He sat down, took up his napkin to unfold 
it — something fluttered to his lap, a tiny, 
white, oblong envelope. He opened it, and 
took out a lady's card; with it came a breath 
of heliotrope. He always did love heliotrope; 
its fragrance, he avowed, was intoxicating. 
The card was engraved, and one-half of the 
name had been erased, leaving only "Fay." 
He turned it over and on the back was writ- 



166 Souls of the Infinite 

ten, "We start for the country to-morrow, but 
I will be sitting in the court at eight to-night." 
He turned it over again — "Fay," in raised 
blue script, and that was all. 

He put the letter in his pocket. He was 
pleased, — more than pleased. 

"Meet me in rose-time, Rosie," he hummed 
as he left the hotel. His mind was full of gen- 
tle ripples, like the stilling of troubled waters. 
He greeted the office girl with a pleasant, 
"How do you do, Carrie?" and one of his most 
beaming smiles. The afternoon could not slip 
by too soon to suit him. 

"Nice how those electric fans do work," he 
remarked to himself as he rolled back the top 
of his desk, "it must have been a good man who 
invented them . . . nice draft from the 
ventilator, too, and the shades on the window 
made the light just right for his desk . . . 
this world isn't nearly so bad as some people 
would make it out to be. Thus the cuckoo 
clock was cooing away the afternoon, till an 
hour or so before closing time, when he had a 
caller. It was Kittie. She had on her dearest 
gown, a pink silk Empire, and the biggest 
picture hat with a great white plume, which 
kept bobbing against her cheek. Her eye^ 



Souls of the Infinite 167 

looked tired, but just as blue, — Kittie's eyes 
always did have the bluest blue shadows, in 
their blue, of any eyes you ever saw. She did 
look sweet; but this was so unexpected, so in- 
opportune. It upset his thinking machine. She 
rarely came to the office. He expected her to 
telephone. 

"Well, kiss me, Hennie. How do you like 
my new bonnet ? I have come to tell you some- 
thing: Mr. Hassett has to go to Philadelphia 
again this afternoon. I fixed up the telegram 
through Mrs. Brown — now don't scold me — 
and he said that I might go to dinner with 

you." 

Did we say Hen's thinking machine was up- 
set? It was worse than that. It was busti- 
cated. His eyes popped so wide open they hurt 
him, and Kittie stood so close to him, he could 
not swing round to get a breath. He kissed 
her and dropped down into a chair, and looked 
at her. 

"Well! Of course— I'll be delighted to take 
you to dinner. But your audacity stupefies 
me. When did Mr. Hassett go?" 

"I just came from seeing him off." 

"You fixed it up through Mrs. Brown? 
Well, he'll find that out." 



168 Souls of the Infinite 

"I hope not. Mrs. Brown is to tell him, 
when he gets there, that she made the mistake, 
and that it was somebody else her husband left 
the message for, and she sent it down by the 
Jap." 

"Well, then, I suppose he will get the 'Owl' 
back at midnight." 

*'Uh hu — if she can't keep him any longer." 

"Well, Kittie, do you know I don't know 
what to think. I didn't suppose you would do 
such reckless things." 

"Now, don't say anything mean. This is 
the first pleasant moment I have had to-day;" 
and, with a little sigh of relief, Kittie sat down, 
not in a vacant chair, however. 

Well, they went to dinner. Hen took her 
early, so as to have time to think, but he had 
little hope of extricating himself before mid- 
night. Kittie had him "hanging to the ropes." 

He was just as nice, however, as he could be; 
Kittie almost forgot her worries, and was a 
little off her guard. At five minutes to eight 
they were seated in the lobby. Hen had intro- 
duced some new guests and they were chatting. 
Then he sneezed, and asked to be excused a 
minute to go and get a heavier coat. 

That sounded very plausible, didn't it? 



Souls of the Infinite 169 

He took the elevator up, hopped off at the 
second floor, shot down the stairs and sauntered 
across the court, toward the big palmetto 
plant. It was quite dusk, but somebody was 
waiting there — just where she had sat the 
evening before. Hen walked straight up to 
her and held out his hand. 

"Miss Fay, you don't know how I ap- 
preciate this. It was most awfully kind of 

you." 

She gave his hand a hearty little squeeze and 
moved over for him to sit down, remarking 
that she had overhead the conversation of the 
night before. Hen explained it to her. Also 
he explained, as best he could, his present situ- 
ation, and begged a thousand pardons if he 
seemed to hurry ; asked her if he might call, and 
when and where, saying that since now they 
were acquainted she might be kind enough to 
put her journey off a day or so. 

In those short moments there was a lifetime 
of acquaintance made, a meeting of the soul. 
Hen got up to go. "Now, before I say good- 
by," he said, "let me a secret whisper." She 
turned her fluffy-duffle head up to the side. 
Hen bent over awfully close, but it was not 
whispering at all he did. I am surprised — and 



170 Souls of the Infinite 

to think she would allow it; but then she prob- 
ably had not time to help herself. 

Two minutes later Henry walked into the 
lobby, as lively as a cricket. He had the same 
coat on, however, but Kittie did not notice it, 
he was so splendidly attentive. 

Well, Fay stayed th< next day and the next. 
A week slipped by. Then, too, these clandes- 
tine appointments were getting numerous. 
Hen simply could not keep away from her, 
though, it was true, she was not as nice a girl as 
Kittie. But then, poor Fay, perhaps she had 
not had as good an opportunity. You cannot 
people judge alone. Man is still a creature of 
environment; provided the environment is 
strong enough. So, then, it is environment 
that we must judge. Fay Naples was as good 
a girl as she could be, nor was she trying now 
to add to Kittie's sorrow; she had had heart- 
aches of her own enough. Yet neither could 
she bring herself to break with Henry, because, 
well — because, to her, he bore a different name; 
for Fay was Phillis. 

Things here were badly out of joint. What 
was to do ? What could be done ? Poor, pretty. 
Fay, with all her sins, was guilty of no moral 
wrong, no wilful injuries to any one; 'twas 



Souls of the Infinite 171 

merely customs she had broken. And Kittie's 
heart was aching; she had loved, and was she 
now to lose? Nor can you really censure 
Henry. Some sorrow seems a sine qua non to 
happenings here below, but again do our 
stupid customs make it doubly hard to bear. 
A lifelong unhappy existence should not be 
made the price of one youthful error. The 
more unhappiness we exact, the worse off we 
make ourselves. Neither should love be 
strangled because it runs not to a customary 
line; the more love there is in the world, the 
better the world is off for it. 



a:HB END. 



lUL 12 19ff 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



